Saturday Morning Cartoons

It's Saturday morning. Do you know what your kids are doing? They are likely sprawled out before the TV, like Tom's brother Danny and sister Carol in this 1957 photo, watching cartoons!

We don't have TV, and I hadn't paid much attention to cartoons for years. But earlier this week Samuel was involved in a sleep study and spent one night and one day in a hospital bed, wired like Robocop, remote in hand. After a good night's sleep on Tuesday he got to watch cartoons during the day on Wednesday, except for the four naps he was forced (his word!) to take. Tom and Jerry cracked me up.

Poor Tom! He's like the weighted Bozo the Clown punching bag we had as kids that fell back every time you popped him one, only to bounce back for another go. All of Tom's teeth shatter like glass when hit by a sailing golf ball; Tom hides in a bush, Jerry comes along with a push mower and cuts down the bush, and Tom comes out looking like a poodle; Tom, suspended in air in the midst of some amazing acrobatic, pats the air under him and realizes that there is nothing holding him up -- and then he falls into the water! Is there no limit to the battering he is willing to endure, all in the hope of one day outwitting Jerry?

Somewhere Tom finds a corset and converts it to a pair of wings so that he can get up to the birdhouse where Jerry is visiting his bird friend. Like a pink-winged butterfly, Tom flies through the sky, his wings flapping. Suddenly Jerry is close enough to untie the corset so that dear old Tom falls to the ground. Next thing you know, he's back in the sky in his wings. Hey, how'd he do that?

On Tuesday we saw the line-up for Saturday's shows on Cartoon Network -- no Tom and Jerry! No other good ol' shows that we grew up with either. I looked up the Saturday morning shows on three kids' channels, and here's a sampling of what your children might be watching right now: super heroes outsmarting villains, children outsmarting adults, inanimate objects outsmarting each other (you know, cars and sponges and things like that), and barnyard animals wearing disguises to outsmart whoever.

Don't you think this would be a good morning for the kids to help you clean the garage??