Childrens TV

Father was addicted to TV, oh was he ever!  He was a Rat Patrol addict.  I sort of could understand this, from the aspect that Uncle Fritz served in intelligence under Rommel in North Africa.  But, this was the same father whom razzed me continually for watching Hop-a-Long Cassidy and Rin Tin Tin.  Father walked in the door and off went all westerns!

Yeah, I have always been an old west-phile.  Even as a child I know I was born in the wrong century.  It was not the excitement of the old west - shooting indians and the such, it was the fact there were standards and people followed standards.  Those whom did not?  Well, you made your choice and the will of the people would be your undoing ....

And I instinctively knew that the taking of human life was wrong, no one in my family would ever have agreed with that one!  One of the reasons I did not care for Rat Patrol or Combat or any of the myriad of such shows father watched ... there were many he wanted dead - most of them Russian.  And he relished watching movies with death - they more the better in his book!

The only thing we did agree on, on the TV, was Saturday morning cartoons and then only Wiley Coyote and the Roadrunner.  Father saw himself as smarter than the universe, so he was obviously the roadrunner.  Not so fortunate, I was an utter klutz even as a child ... yeah, the curse of the Coyote.

So, I was sitting here Sunday, with fmy our year old grand-daughter on my lap and she is completely mesmerized by My Little Pony.  And I am sitting here thinking, what on earth is iat that she sees in this to hold her attention so riveted?  For 3.5 hours!

As an experiment I tried to distract her by an old western - real horse, real story.  Nope she was not going to have any of that it!  It would be Rainbow Dash all the way!

I wonder if it is a brain thing.  I mean could cartoon images be more attractive to the child mind over life-like images?  But, as a child of her age, I preferred real images to pretend ... except for Underdog!  He could fly and well, real dogs do not do so well off the ground ...  Then again, if I was addicted to the cartoon world as a child it would have been the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show!  I would sell my sister to watch Rock and Bullwinkle!  No real loss there either!  LOL  (I can say that because she does not read my blog, nor much else on the computer!)

So, Hop-a-Long or Bullwinkle?  Sargent Preston or Dudley Do-right?  Superman or Underdog?

I do not mind losing Superman, but all of the others were my favorites.  A mixture of real images and cartoon, both fascinated me.  But, for grand-daughter it is only cartoons at this stage.

It will be interesting to see how her life goes to see if that is a predictor of something about her mind we still do not know yet.

Oh yeah, and at four, when my grandmother would let me stay up, The Twilight Zone .... but do not let my mother know!