Captain Kangaroo
This morning, as we do every morning, Tom
and I were outside drinking coffee and having tidbit conversations.
He mentioned Icky Twerp, a children's TV character from waaaay back.
When Tom was a child, he MET Icky Twerp at a local grocery store
promotion.
That reminded me of Captain Kangaroo. Captain Kangaroo was a another
children's character who had a television show. One of the most
exciting moments of my young life was when I was actually ON the
Captain Kangaroo show, sometime in the mid 50's. My folks took
pictures of the television set. In their photographs, you can't
actually tell that the TV is ON, but whenever we are looking through
old photos, there's that old set, with the rabbit ears and knobs and
a blank screen. I'll
bet that photograph will be quite a puzzlement for generations to come.
I just today figured out an incident that happened while there
in the studio that I have had my feeling hurt about all these years.
Being in a studio is so much different than watching on television. There
is so much activity and prompting and monitors everywhere. One of the
best things about being there was that I knew from watching daily
that I was going to get a gift! My birthday was in September and it was
September and they always did the gift thing -- every day.
The thing is, when they were talking to us, getting the birthday kids all
organized (during the cartoon) for the birthday gift giving, I was watching
the cartoon on the monitor instead of paying attention. So I missed my
big moment of glory on public television.
After the show, I went up to Mr Kangaroo and explained to him that I
wasn't paying attention, but that it was my birthday a few days ago, so
could I please have my gift? The man brushed me OFF! Just like
I wasn't there. I feel cheated to this very day.
So, this morning, I figured out that instead of simply being a complete
jerk and child hater who couldn't be bothered, it must have been that he
just thought I was trying to get myself a gift that I wasn't entitled to.
I won't forgive him, though. It isn't nice to disillusion young children.
¤ ¤ ¤
The town where I live has cancelled the 4th of July fireworks display. They
are afraid they might disturb the egrets.
Last summer, the city plowed up an egret nesting area. It raised quite a
stir among the nature loving sorts in the area. After a court battle, it
was ruled that the city had to rebuild the egret town and pay a fine of
70K for being so bad in the first place.
There have been fireworks displays for years, but not this year.
I was relating this bit of news to Daniel
when we were coming home from the grocery store today.
Daniel: What's an egret?
Me: It is one of those white heron-looking things we see around.
Daniel: What's a heron?
That's all the inspiration I needed to go off on an egret hunting
adventure. It didn't really take very long since I'm one of the
friendly neighborhood birdwatchers. Within five minutes we found
two of them, in flight over one of their favorite fields.
¤ ¤ ¤
I am a member of a new, start-up webring called The Amalgam. I'm
VERY excited about it as the ring has some of the best writers (in
my opinion) in the community. The collab projects will certainly
be a stretch for me but I'm certainly looking forward to it.
Wish me luck.
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