I was watching TV with the kids yesterday, and what should come on WPIX but an old episode of “The Magic Garden,” in all its Seventies glory, from bell-bottom trousers to the wacky pastel colors everywhere. The show, for those of you who never saw it, was a preschool show, with two women (Carol and Paula) who sang songs, acted out stories, interacted with puppets, the usual kids’ show stuff. My kids, 3 and 5, loved it. What amazed me was how quickly something like that can take you back, bring back all the little details of the show that have sat dormant in your memory all these years. I’m quite certain I haven’t seen the show since I was about 6 years old (I’m 31 now), but the gimmicks (the Chuckle Patch, daisies that tell corny jokes, to the Storybox with its low-budget costumes for storytime playacting) and the jingles (“you don’t need a key, so follow me, there are no locks on storybox, on story box”; “see ya see ya, hope you had a good good time . . . “) all came piling out of the recesses of my brain.
It was also a reminder – today’s kids’ shows are quite good, some of them, and so were the shows I used to watch, but they’re different now – shows like Blues’ Clues and Dora the Explorer are just busier, more crowded with THINGS TO SEE AND LEARN!!! than the shows I used to watch as a preschooler. Better? Worse? Just that the world keeps moving faster and getting more complicated, and times never stand still. It’s the reality we all deal with, either way, and the world my kids have to prepare for will already be different than the one I live in now, which is plenty modern enough for my tastes.