Monday, July 28, 2014

School Lists and Little Cheese Dudes. My years of 'No Television' are Showing.

Back when my oldest was going into first grade, I remember taking her school-supply shopping with The List.  You remember The List, right?  That full-page of #10 font, single-spaced, 3-columns of SUPER IMPORTANT STUFF like this:
 "One full 987-piece pack of erasable color Sharpie brand fine-point nontoxic washable markers including neon and white (please make SURE they're washable. Mrs. K's classroom has just been painted again)"

Yeah.  She just graduated, but I SO do not miss those Lists. Of course, next month she starts college, and there's still a list, only now it has *just* two things on it.
1.  $700.00 worth of text books.
 2.  New Apple Laptop of $900 value or better.

*sigh*

moving on

I still remember that first-grade shopping trip, though.  We'd picked out a cute little-girl backpack and cute little-girl pencils and lunchbox and clothes and socks and shoes and the 987-pieces of erasable whatever, a pink ruler, highlighters in 10 colors, a pencil box, a container of 500 erasers, and a pallet of Kleenex, then we turned down the...notebook aisle.  She had to have several notebooks, of course, because learning to write takes LOTS OF PAPER.

Bear in mind that I have spent most of my life, and hers, without any TV, and especially without cable.  Or Nickelodeon.  So I had no earthly idea what I was looking at, on some of the folders.  I recognized Hello Kitty, because...hello...that cat has been around since I was in 2nd grade.  But the rest?  I didn't recognize any of them. What even ARE Bratz?!  You guys!!  They look like Angelina in size 14 shoes from some weird disco/roller derby nightmare.  Scary.

We stopped in front of the folders, and to this day we still laugh about the conversation:

Me:  Ok--Folders.  They have rainbows, Hello Kitty, puppies...some little cheese dude...?

Her:  Mom.  That's SpongeBob. He's not cheese.

Me:  Who's "SpongeBob"? He looks like Swiss cheese. Why are his eyes bloodshot?

Her:  He lives in the ocean. Can I get that one?

Me:  I guess so.  But not the one with the bloodshot eyes.  That's just weird.

After that, we actually started watching SpongeBob now and then, and once you get past the close-ups of the bloodshot eyes or the semi-gross jokes in some of them...he's pretty cute.  I get it now.

Little cheese dude... 
Sorry kids.



8 comments:

  1. Ahhh...I so much don't miss the school shopping days..

    Spongebob..I didn't mind Spongebob, but there were a lot of those cartoons that were like a drill in my eyeball.

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    1. LOL. I also missed the whole Pokemon thing. What the heck WERE those things?

      If it's not Bugs Bunny or Yogi Bear type stuff, I'm pretty much out. But Spongebob did kind of grow on me.

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    2. It was so much more fun watching you with your horses & Shua with his chickens than any TV shows could have possibly been.
      Mom

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    3. I have pictures of him with those chickens! "Chicken Whisperer" needs to probably be a post title sometime...

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  2. I have never watched Sponge Bob, although he's a favorite of my niece...or was at one point. She's into Duck Dynasty now. I once read a scientific article that said that Sponge Bob actually makes kids dumber. That was enough to scare me off, but I have no idea why kids' cartoons are so ugly these days. What happened to the cute characters I grew up with like Care Bears and the Get Along Gang? What is with things like Sponge Bob, Fairly Odd Parents, Phineas and Ferb? Maybe I'm just old.

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    1. Ugh, Phineas and Ferb. And Recess. Ew. I was glad we didn't get those channels...

      Funny about the scientific article, unfortunately probably true.

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    2. It mostly had to do with people letting their very young children watch it. Like pre-school age because the show changes scenes too fast and it doesn't force them to focus for any period of time, thus leading to attention deficit problems and then dumbs them down when school rolls around. There are a lot of other shows that fall into that category too. Like, why do people let their 4 year olds watch shows for pre-teens? What pre-schooler needs to be obsessed with Justin Bieber?

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