What I Learned From Cartoons

I have spent much of my life in front of the TV. While some may diss television, I look fondly on it as my teacher, my muse. Much of what I’ve learned of the world I’ve gleaned from cartoons. Daffy Duck taught me about Messerschmitt airplanes (“A mess of Messerschmitts!”). I learned the word “atoll” from a Beanie & Cecil episode, when they sailed to “No Bikini Atoll”. Mr. Peabody and His Boy Sherman taught me all about history. I don’t remember any of it now, but I know it made sense at the time. Warner Brothers cartoons were so clever and fun. They didn’t talk down to kids. I’m pretty sure the cartoonists and voice artists had a blast going to work every day. My favorite cartoon of all time was Rocky & Bullwinkle. I was really young when I discovered it, but still understood the adult puns and jokes. I wasn’t brilliant, just maybe attuned to cartoons. I learned of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam from Rocky & Bullwinkle, only it wasn’t a Persian poem. It was a jewel-encrusted toy boat - a ruby yacht. There’s a lot of talk these days about the effect of violent TV on children. Cartoons from my childhood had all kinds of violence going on. Wiley Coyote had a gazillion ways of annihilating the Roadrunner. It makes me wonder what would be left to eat if he were successful. Characters were routinely shot or exploded, only to be whole again a moment later. I quite enjoyed seeing the different ways Bugs Bunny would destroy Yosemite Sam. Then he’d always come back for more. Nobody ever seemed to learn their lesson, and the sassy naughty ones triumphed again and again. Cartoons were my guilty pleasure, when I was too young to have a guilty pleasure. I think I’ve always expected to run across a dynamite shack, or see an anvil falling from the sky. Life imitating art? Meep meep...

Utterances

Here are some things I never thought I’d say out loud...

-  To my dog, Lucy: “Girlfriend, you’ve got junk in your beard.”

-  To my dog, Cosmo: “Dude, did you just eat a bug?”

-  To my dog, Stella, after finding turds all over the living room carpet: “What did you do, poop and spin?”

-  To my daughter, Molly, after discussion of our life plans: “I’m no spring chicken. I’ve got to build my empire.”

-  After getting a new sewer pipe, and being able to finally use good, 2-ply toilet paper: “It’s a Christmas miracle!” (it was August).

-  To myself, while contemplating the down side of getting older: “Remember when you could get up from the couch without rocking first, or without farting?”

-  To myself after finding a single dog turd on my living room carpet: “Where’s the other one? They usually travel in pairs.”

-  To myself, after seeing a TV exercise commercial reference muscle confusion: “How about 'fat confusion'? That sounds like a better plan to me."

Weighing In

I have my annual physical tomorrow. Fun times. Aside from having to get naked and have my blood drawn, the most dreaded part is getting weighed. Due to surgery last spring, I have lost quite a bit of weight. I’m more curious than scared of the weigh in. Still, as is my routine, I have planned out my outfit. It will be my flimsiest clothes (I think it’s cheating to show up in my underwear). Track pants, blouse, no watch or jewelry. Oh, and I always exhale before stepping onto the scale. This may be silly, but I can’t ever seem to set aside my uber-planning ways. In the past, I have tried to decline getting weighed. My primary physician is a no-nonsense kind of doc and doesn’t put up with my antics. Also, her skinny little blonde nurse always rats me out if I refuse a trip to the scale. My rheumatologist, on the other hand, is very sweet and gentle. About every 4 months I have a check-up for my knees. At every visit, her nurse says “Do you want to get weighed today?” and I answer “Ummm... noooo”. Little did I know, my refusals were being documented. Last month, my rheumatologist was looking through my file to see how much weight I had lost. She scrolled through the big file, reading out loud “Declined” over and over. Damn...I had no clue. Everyone was so non-confrontational. I just assumed I had been getting away with something. My doctor finally found a weight documented from October 2010. Wow - I held them off for over 2 years! I’m not sure if I should feel embarrassed or proud. So tomorrow, we’ll see how much my dietary transformation efforts have paid off. I may still act reluctant to get on the scale, so the nurse won’t think I sent a stand-in. Or maybe I should freak her out and beg to get weighed. I think she deserves to have her teeny tiny little chain yanked a bit.

Dreams

I had a dream last night about a childhood friend from school. I haven’t actually seen Sarah for 25 years and have no idea why I dreamed about her. Sometimes after I’ve dreamed about a random person from my past, I encounter their name again the next day. For instance, when my sister Mickey was about 10 years old she went through what we called her “Roger” phase. At that time, she liked to wear a blue and white football shirt and wanted us to call her Roger. One night a few years ago, I had a dream about someone named Roger. The next day, I was buying plants at a nursery and kept hearing a woman hollering at her son, Roger. After that I went to the grocery store, where I overheard someone in the produce department talking to someone named Roger. It was freaky. So, I called Mickey to make sure she was OK. That’s the only thing I could come up with. I figured the Cosmos was trying to send me a message. Most of my dreams don’t make enough sense to try to interpret. All I know is that I’m very, very busy in my sleep. My most frequent recurring dream is where I need to be somewhere in 15 minutes. I go to my closet to pick out an outfit, and my closet is full of clothes I’ve never seen before. I can’t decide what to wear, while the clock ticks slowly away. It’s actually kind of an awesome dream, and I have yet to select an outfit. Many of my dreams are bizarre and make no sense. In one, Donny Osmond was under my bed, trying to coerce my cat to come to him. I had no cat, which is only the beginning of what’s wrong with that dream. My strangest dream involved another celebrity - Madonna. In that dream, I was sitting on a toilet in the middle of some kind of large, warehouse-type room. While I was sitting on this public toilet, Madonna climbed out of it. OMG! Seriously, why the hell would a vision like that pop into my brain? I have frequent celebrity sightings in my dreams, but that one takes the cake. I much prefer the amazing closet dream. Not a toilet in sight, and it doesn’t embarrass me to talk about it. Now that I’ve told the world, let us never speak of it again.

Nun Of The Above

Growing up Catholic in Utah added a kind of twisty dimension to life. We attended Catholic school, in full plaid uniform regalia. Might as well have had three heads and purple polka dots. But they say what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger. When she was in sixth grade, my sister Kathy and her friend Robin sewed nun habits to play in. Kathy is a fabulous seamstress, and able to make anything except maybe shoes. By the age of twelve, her sewing skills were already finely-honed. I’m sure the nun habits looked authentic. Kathy and Robin walked around the backyard, heads bowed in prayer. My mom received more than one phone call from a neighbor who was concerned that someone was extremely sick. Apparently, they couldn’t see the girls on the swing set when the nun game got boring. I couldn’t quite figure out what was so fun about walking around praying, but decided to find out. I asked if I could play, and was rebuffed because I didn’t have the required outfit. I was in Kindergarten, and hadn’t had that much contact yet with nuns. I had only a vague idea how they dressed. In my mind, a nun habit involved a dress, veil, rope around the waist, and old lady chunky-heeled sensible shoes that tied. Aside from the rope, I had none of those items. So I improvised. I wore a full petticoat, with a half petticoat on my head (the stiff, noisy 1960 kind), and a rope around my waist. For footwear, I chose a pair of black cowboy boots that were decorated with red and green diamond shapes. They were too cool for words. They were also too cool for playing nun. My sister totally dissed my outfit and refused to let me play. So, I think I went and dug a hole or something. If any neighbors were still watching our house, they probably thought all the praying was for the little insane girl with the petticoat on her head. This was the beginning of the end of my religious faith.

Rain Bonnets & Disco

As I left on my afternoon walk with the dogs recently, I saw an elderly neighbor lady out with her caregiver. It was sunny but extremely cold. This woman, bless her heart, was pushing her walker. She was wearing a dress under her coat, and I could see her poor little bare legs. She was also wearing a rain bonnet, which probably didn’t do much to keep her head warm. Gazing at that rain bonnet, it struck me that this item is something from a bygone era. Each generation has things they cling to, as time marches on. My mother was quite fond of rain and wind bonnets back in the day, to save her hairdo from the elements. I scoffed at this curious headgear, and vowed never to wear it myself. Seems to me I also cringed at the thought of getting my hair “done” once a week. So, I wonder what things my generation holds onto that my own kids scoff at. Music is always at the top of any generational list of things to make fun of. Disco is alive and well and living in my iPod, but it’s my own little secret. I don’t foist it on anyone, mostly due to not wishing to be the subject of the Eye Roll. My generation is having to get used to a paperless world. It’s weird weening myself from paper receipts and statements. I seriously doubt my kids ever fill out their checkbooks. They just check the internet, while I spend a couple hours every month balancing my checkbook. I find putting my receipts in little piles and matching things up kind of therapeutic, though. Go figure. I’m curious about what possible things currently cherished by my kids will be ridiculed by their kids. DVDs, iPods, skinny jeans? I will enjoy a front row seat, and try not to smile.

Zamboni Time

As a child, I used to watch in fascination as my teachers erased their blackboards. I suspected something wasn’t right with any teacher who missed a spot or erased willy-nilly. In high school, I was in a math class taught by Sister Claire Assisi. She was easily a thousand years old, and I was terrified of her. One day before class, I came into the room to find Sister very slowly waving one of those really long erasers about six inches from the blackboard. I missed the part beforehand where she had wiped the board with a wet cloth, so just figured her brilliant mind had finally snapped. It took me a while to realize she was merely drying the blackboard before class. I hate to admit that I was a teensy bit disappointed Sister wouldn’t be carted off in a straight jacket. Some years later, my blackboard eraser fascination transferred to something new - the ice rink Zamboni machine. I could watch this vehicle all day. It’s so gratifying to see the ice get all shiny and new. I wonder if it’s as pleasant for the driver. Does he feel pressure, with the eyes of the world on his every move? I’ve heard there is a Zamboni Fantasy Camp. How awesome would that be? I’m not too certain, though, that I could handle driving this machine. I’m an OK automobile driver, and probably wouldn’t get all road ragey atop a Zamboni. However, I am seriously challenged when it comes to parking and totally suck at backing up. Perhaps there’s a Remedial Zamboni Fantasy Camp. I wrote an essay a few years ago, in an attempt to win a chance to drive the Wienermobile. I secretly knew this would be a bad idea, but damn... that would’ve been fabulous. My sweet ride... mobile lunchmeat. Still waiting for that flying car I thought we’d all be driving by now. Hmmmm...

(Note: Unbeknownst to me as I wrote this, today is the 112th birthday of Frank Zamboni, inventor of my beloved ice cleaning machine. How cosmic is that?)