Are there any things that you learned from cartoons or educational shorts that you unconsciously refer to in your mind on a regular basis as an adult?
For example, when I find myself being tough on myself, my childhood-hero Popeye reminds me that “I (y)am what I (y)am, and that’s all that I (y)am.”
Also, again the tough-on-myself thing, when I make a stupid mistake and am berating myself, the sage advice pops up from “The Most Important Person”, “Whoops! I made a mistake, that’s all, and mistakes can happen to anyone!”
I don’t know why those stuck with me! What’s yours?
I once saw a Canadian short film about some girls gossiping in school. I don’t remember all of the details, but the lesson amounted to “the way people speak about others when they are with you is the way they speak about you when they are with others.”
A commercial I saw once that’s stuck with me for a while:
A teenage girl, her first day at a new Highschool, is walking alone on some steps, when she sees her stepsister talking with a group of friends. She whines about the normal “wicked stepsister” bit, how she’s so horrible to her, and then she trips over a step and drops her books.
All her stepsister’s friends point and laugh, but the SS sneers at them and says (roughly) “Hey, leave it alone. That’s my step-sister.”
Try to find a bit of empathy for the other side. They’re seeing the same thing as you with very different eyes.
When I was really young I had a childrens’ musical album called “Josephine the Short-Necked Giraffe”. I haven’t heard the ting since I was 5 years old but I still remember 2 songs from it so much that I can sing them.
Josephine was really depressed because she had a shirt neck. And all the kids would tease her. One day she meets a new boy giraffe starts at school and she is very shy and embarassed in front of him (I forget his name, maybe Joey). But the boy giraffe tells Josephine that he likes the way she looks. He tells her she’s “petite”. Josephine likes that a lot. I always thought that was such an awesome story.
BTW, has anyone ever heard of this album? Or any idea how I can find it again?
It’s from a Sesame Street bit, the details of which I don’t remember at all – but when I’m feeling overwhelmed with a dozen things happening at once (my usual situation at work), I take a deep breath and ask myself, “Okay, what happens next?”
Remember that trippy Sesame Street thing where the kid is walking along and sees an increasingly bizarre series of landmarks and characters, and realizes that he’s lost? Then he backtracks by turning around and watching for the same landmarks?
I, uh, did that this afternoon. No psychedelic fountains or dudes on unicycles . . . but I got lost on the way to a Labor Day picnic and ended up having to backtrack a few blocks to get back to a street I knew.
Lesson I still carry with me, taught to me by Reuben Kincaid from an episode of The Partridge Family:
"A bachelor is never without his can opener!"
(Of course, Reuben forgot his can opener when they were out in the woods, and they just couldn’t get that damn can of beans open.)
Whenever I find myself learning something new, especially if it corrected a particularly stupid belief I had, I think, “And knowing is half the battle!” Courtesy of G.I. Joe. I only really remember the one about the downed power lines (for some reason, all the public safety message were about downed power lines when I was a child), but I’ve been able to apply it more generally, thank goodness.
Well, keys go here, and fingers go here, but smart little buddies know they don’t go here!
Oh, and in high school Red Asphalt 3 definately taught me not to drive without a seatbelt in the hopes of being “thrown free”. Unfortunately there is no vomiting smiley.
I’m not sure where (or if) you can find it, but it’s a musical from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. We used to have it on video, but the tape was eaten by our old VCR (and there were many tears). Given that my younger child is now 11 and that the tears were her now 14-year-old sister’s, I’ve been out of the market for children’s video and music for quite a while.
Whenever I have to spell Mississippi, I start hearing one of those old “follow the bouncing ball” sing-a-longs that were played during episodes of Casper.
I might be willing to consider trapanning if I thought it would get that memory out of my head.
I’ll never forget to take cover when I hear the warning sirens, courtesy of all the Civil Defense public service announcements on radio and tv when I was a child.
Also, thanks to the educational film “The Extraordinary World of Zinc” (satirized decades later on The Simpsons) I know better than to ever wish for a world without zinc.
