Saturday Morning Cartoons - Free Babysitting for Exhausted Parents - The 80's #11

 More peace treaty than entertainment, Saturday morning cartoons quietly negotiated a truce between parents who needed sleep and children who woke at dawn like feral animals.

Quietly... as long as the TV was on another floor of the house.

No alarms were needed. As kids, we naturally got up at dawn, driven by the knowledge that missing the opening theme music to our favorite cartoon might be the death of joy itself.

Pajamas were mandatory. Except for my brother, who took their confining role as a personal afront to his freedom.

Necessary for the full experience, too, was a bowl of cereal large enough to qualify as an Olympic event.

Milk was poured haphazardly.

"Nutritional value" was heresy.

The television set became a shrine. We parked our butts inches from the screen, soaking in animation and advertisement with equal devotion. Cartoons and commercials taught us valuable lessons:

- Friendship is worth fighting soldiers for

- Teamwork is how you get rid of sadness

- There was a finite number of marshmallows that could legally be counted as breakfast

- Desire was a good thing, especially a want for toys we didn't need, cereal we were already eating, and action figures that'd be missing accessories within seconds of opening the packaging

Parents knew there was a delicate system at play, and they didn't dare to interrupt.

Time was sacred. If nobody was bleeding and the house wasn't on fire, then the cartoons could handle the rest. It was parenting - outsourced.

THIS MORNINGS PARENTING BROUGHT TO YOU BY BRIGHTLY COLOURED ANIMALS AND DOMINATINGLY CHEERFUL THEME SONGS.

There was a rhythm associated with the whole process. As a kid, you didn't so much pick what you wanted; more like simply accept what came on next. We learned patience and compromise that way.

We learned that sometimes our favorite shows were followed by ones we tolerated for our little sisters sake, and such was life. Miss an episode and it was gone forever. No rewinds, No recordings. No on demand streaming.

Just the stark realization that another seven sleeps of waiting is suddenly necessary.

Waiting... That's The Part Of The Experience That Seems So Foreign Now

Waiting has been lost to time and every modern person's lack of it. Sure, we waited. Yes, it was a shared schedule. But no, we didn't hate waiting like our kids and grandkids do.

In the 80's, Saturday mornings meant millions of children were watching the same colourful nonsense at the same time, connected by theme songs and sugary whole grains.

Sometimes, the best moments don't need a curator, and they don't need to be optimized. They simply need to be allowed to happen.

We didn't plan joy. We showed up in our "feety pajamas", wiped the sleep from our eyes, and let joy find us.

And the world was a loud but harmless, colourful kind of place for a few golden hours every Saturday morning.

Then the cartoons ended...

And the parent woke up.