The thread about Health Class films got me thinking. What was the most outrageous (or memorable) morality tale for kids that you can remember? It can be a movie, TV show, or book.
The stupidest anti-drug story I’ve seen was a book in the “Sweet Valley High” series called “On the Edge”. Most of it wasn’t even about drugs.
Most of it was typical “you stole my boyfriend!” claptrap of a lot of young chick lit.
Young girl is betrayed and winds up with bad boy, who introduces her to (gasp!) beer!!! And at the very same party where she has her first beer, some others let her do two lines of cocaine!!! Whereupon she has an immediate heart attack.
The next couple of pages have dialogue that is so Victorian, it’s laughable. As her brother leans over her, she gasps delicately, “You…were always…such a good brother…” Little Eva’s death scene, anyone?
Now that I think about it, there’s plenty of other equally lame cautionary tales out there. What are some that you fondly remember?
Close, but the winner is Jesse Spanno’s incredibly hilarious and badly acted “I’m so excited, I’m so excited, I’m so…scared!” breakdown on Saved by the Bell.
Back when I was a kid, in the early Seventies, there was an incredibly hokey single called “Once You Understand,” by a studio group called Think.
For three minutes, a group of kids sang over and over, “Things get a little easier… once you understand.” As they sang, you’d hear the voices of stereotypical conservative parents screaming at their kids “Get a haircut, you hippie.” “Clean up your room, you slob!” “When I was your age, I had a job and helped support my family.”
At the end, a policeman comes to tell one of the mean parents, “Your son is dead. He died of an overdose.”
Moral for Moms and Dads: NEVER make any demands of your kids, NEVER tell them what to do, or they’ll start shooting heroin and it will be all YOUR fault!
I recall once, browsing in the remainders at a bookstore, I came across a collection of stories in verse called From Bad to Worse. One story was about “The Scissors Man,” a bogeyman who appears in a puff of smoke before a small boy sucking his thumbs, and cuts off his thumbs. Of which eventuality the boy was warned many times by his parents, if he would not quit sucking his thumbs. Significantly, this all happens as soon as his parents leave him alone. I think this counts as a Family Unfriendly Aesop. See also Disproportionate Retribution.
Don’t forget that Regina was DEAF from her mother taking DIET PILLS while pregnant, and Regina was so beautiful she was a MODEL, but turned down a career in modeling because she was SMART.
I still love and re-read my SVH collection. Have you read any of the college years ones - now there’s some pretty heavy-handed morality tales, now with actual sex and employment and marriage!
Sex ed class at my (Catholic) high school. We watched a video about sex starring Whoopi Goldberg. I don’t believe Whoopi Goldberg advocates abstinence, but her appearance anywhere in a movie about sex certainly makes a compelling case for it, lol.
We got to watch the first part, where these two friends play hoops, and one tells his buddy about his genital warts, replete with super close up photos. But then when Whoopi began telling us that sex can also be enjoyable…wham. Power off to the VCR.
I haven’t read the comic in a while, but apparently in Runways, Victor pirates some music and as a result two of his friends are killed when a plane crashes into their house.
This thread is killing me - I’m laughing so hard I’m crying.
I’m saying “…some others let her do two lines of cocaine” while whispering the “cocaine” part like the mother from St. Elmo’s Fire.
This:
followed by this:
made me accidentally pee a little. I have no clue what you look like, but I don’t care…picturing anyone doing it is hurting my sides.
HILARIOUS! At first I thought it was going to be something about running with scissors (the man who ran with scissors is now a lady), but it’s so much better!
“The great tall tailor always comes. To little boys that suck their thumbs”. That’s Struwwelpeter right there, though apparently repackaged.
My mum would often use episodes of Full House or the like as a springboard to important, serious chats with my sister and I, about peer pressure and smoking or whatever. However, I remember distinctly catching the above mentioned Save By the Bell pill breakdown and her just laughing away at the ridiculousness of it and mocking the hell out of it.
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