Friday Free for All Topic of the Week: Saturday Morning Cartoons
My memories of the joy that was Saturday morning cartoons illustrate the true difference between kids and adults. When I was a kid, not only did I not sleep in on Saturdays, but I would get up even earlier than a weekday just so that I could camp out in front of the TV for a couple of unhindered hours before my mom made us do our chores.
I always associate watching Saturday morning cartoons with my brother Cody (who is only a year younger than I am). We were the only ones who actually chose to get up at an obscene hour like 6:00 in the morning on Saturdays. Okay, I take that back. My dad did, too, but it was to go play basketball, and he's kind of crazy, so that really doesn’t count. My older sisters were teenagers (the lure of the Saturday morning cartoon had lost its magic) and had come to appreciate the value of sleep, and our youngest brother TJ was too little during the golden age of the Saturday morning cartoons.
And seriously, you can’t tell me that cartoons were better back then. They weren’t. They were just as crappy as they are now, and we totally didn’t care. I mean, I hate those Tom and Jerry cartoons or the Roadrunner now because they are so violent, and that really bugs me. Seriously, I wouldn’t let my kids watch them. But I didn’t seem to have a problem with them back then.
Here’s a list of other crappy cartoons that my brother and I loved to watch:
- He-Man (and the Masters of the Universe!)
- She -Ra (or was she just a character in He-Man? I forget.)
- Jem and the Holograms
- Thunder Cats (seriously, what kind of creepy show was that? Yeah, it was a favorite.)
- Smurfs
- Transformers
- The Bugs Bunny and Friends
- G.I. Joe
Now my feelings on Saturday morning cartoons have changed, but they are no less appreciated. Ellis and I discovered when our oldest daughter was about 3, that we could train her to head down to the family room when she woke up on Saturdays rather than wake up her tired parents who just wanted to sleep in that ONE day (is that asking too much?) We’d make sure the TV channel was set on PBS and showed her how to turn it on when she got up in the morning. Then we’d get up an hour later or so, and you know, give her some food or something. It was a win-win situation.
Life really hasn’t been as good since we stopped getting cable . . .
