Kids these days....another grumpy rant

I feel sad for children these days. Attention spans have shortened, cartoon animals are more often than not smart-talking wise-asses, illustrations in books have lost that old-time candystore, nursery room look and Barbie now dresses like Britney. Hip and cool are in and plain old-fashioned kindness and appreciation for simple morals are fast being tossed out today’s multimedia window.

You know what? I hate hearing children under the age of 10 say “cool”. What the heck do they know about cool at that age???? Lots, apparently, as any extended viewing of the cartoon channels these days will reveal. Bah.

Even sadder, I can no longer remember so many things from my own childhood. There was a TV show where the main character was a monkey and he had a sister called Vanilla. And the best puppet of all, even better than anything on Sesame Street was Lamb Chop the sock puppet. How I loved Lamb Chop (not to be confused with my love of the edible sort)! Used to put my school sock over my hand to make a bald, faceless substitute just to look at that mouth. She was on the Shari Lewis Show, way before she got her own Play-Along show.

And then there was a TV show called Animals, Animals, Animals. This will bug me to old age…I’ve googled it but still fail to find the lyrics to the theme song. The chorus goes like this:-

“Animals, animals, animals here and there,
Animals, animals, animals, animal, animals everywhere!”

It plays during some kind of morphing montage of stained-glass-looking animal pictures…”there are animals that live in trees, something something… fish that swim in seas…something something, a lady pig’s a sow, something something”.

T’was a really good show. Like National Geographic Channel, only without scenes of chase chase bite bite roar eeeeeeeeeargh, keeerunch munch. And less focus on crocodiles and sharks.

Kids should learn about nature and good old fashioned morals (basic kindness and consideration) and their natural inclination towards fantasy should be encouraged with Enid Blyton and Hans Christian Andersen stories. And they should be taught silly song. So there.