#02 My Childhood in Three Cartoons

Let's talk about childhood. For me, Saturday mornings were mostly a disappointment. Since I wasn't allowed sugar (mother claimed I was hyper if you can imagine), my breakfast options were limited.

A) Oatmeal with raisins
B) Wheaties cereal without sugar
C) Toast on WHEAT bread with generic brand peanut butter

Raisins reminded me of bugs so I wouldn't eat the oatmeal. As a child, eating wheat bread was similar to eating cardboard covered in dirt. That left me with the Wheaties cereal. If I was lucky, at night while my parents were asleep, I'd sneak some sugar into a frisbee that I stashed under my bed and then I could sprinkle some on the breakfast NOT for champions.

After breakfast, I could watch cartoons with my grandpa who loved The Road Runner cartoon. He'd watch it in his recliner and laugh every time good ol' Wyle E fell into a canyon or had a boulder crashing down on him. As for myself, I was always annoyed at cartoon laws and physics. Nobody died. That poor coyote was always being humiliated and maybe I felt extreme empathy because I felt humiliated half the time. Also, it was just stupid. It made me think of these characters that you would be too young to know about, The Three Stooges, who were these three moronic guys who told bad jokes and were violent to each other.

Overall, I hated cartoons because they were childish and predictable. If I had to pick a cartoon to watch, I would always choose The Jetsons.  I didn't like the stories and I particularly hated the fact that the show used something called 'canned laughter' which was also used on sitcoms such as Three's Company (a completely worthless show) and one of my grandpa's other favorite shows,  Hogan's Heroes. I loved anything related to Science Fiction and outer space and some of the mechanized inventions on the show were enjoyable. As a budding young writer, I knew there weren't enough Science Fiction and Fantasy movies and I used my manual typewriter to write a 1,000-page movie script for one of my favorite novels. If you've never used one, the sound can create a beat if you can type fast enough. Also, there is a smell of ink from the ribbon that's musty but fun. At this point, you must be thinking childhood in the 70s was so much cooler than when you grew up. You're probably right.

The last cartoon that I could stomach watching but I didn't truly like was The Flintstones. Believe it or not, the show was sponsored by a cigarette company and they used the cartoon for advertisements. If it were a show today, I guess they would be vaping. I liked the idea of it being set back in the prehistoric ages but even as a child, I understood that this cartoon was just as unrealistic as anything on TV because of the cars and family structure that did not exist in the Stone Ages. I was an annoyingly smart kid and normal life was boring.