Dear Sunday morning cartoons

Thanks for the memories

Friday nights are movie and pizza night in my small plot in the city. I once believed this tradition was unique to our family. Silly me. Each family home I visit, the more evident it is that Friday nights are for parents who are done, done and doner. Enter, frozen or ordered-in pizza and an animated movie on the screen of your choice.

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Most Fridays we have two kids fighting while watching a shared family film. The third child we lost long ago to the dark and forested depths of the computer in his room. I hear him laughing from time to time, which assures me he’s still alive and capable of happiness.

Pizza is a key component of Fridays; putting me squarely at the oven. On a night I tell myself and everyone within earshot that I don’t cook. No, ma’am. Instead, I bake a pizza, boil pasta, chop and deseed items we call vegetables, yet are by definition fruit; and whip up a pan of brownies - complete with my signature sparkle…chocolate chips plus several spurts of Hershey’s syrup in the fudgey batter.

I don’t cook on Fridays. I just serve up a four-course meal.

While waiting for the brownies to reach the perfect pitch of goo plus chew, I chat with my daughter about her movie of choice: Scooby Doo. There are a bevy of Scooby Doos to choose from in its deep catalog reaching back more than six decades. This particular vintage was circa 2010.

I remarked to my 12-year-old that the animation looked like a Sunday morning cartoon. Then, “Do you know what a Sunday morning cartoon is?” She, born and raised on Netflix and YouTube Kids, most certainly did not.

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But I do. The hazy halcyon weekends of my youth smell like newsprint and pancakes, paired with the heady fog of church-loving women’s rose-scented perfume. My dad sat in the dining room, newsprint heaped in organized piles across the hardwood. Laughing to himself about some pickle Archie had gotten himself out of (again!), he’d pass me the rumpled cartoon section.

Our shared love of humor and comic strips binding us over breakfast.

Following this delightful comic appetizer, I’d skip down the hall for the main dish: Sunday morning cartoons. All my friends were there: Bullwinkle and Rocky, Grape Ape, The Smufs, Thundercats, He-man and SheRa, Inspector Gadget, Jem, The Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, and a magical menagerie of so many more.

Wide-eyed and criss cross applesauce on the shag carpet, I couldn’t choose the show. There was no fast forward. Commercials were not only endured, but showed us the next awesome toy for our birthday and Christmas lists. Teddy Ruxpin, I’m ever so sorry we never had our meet cute.

The Saturday and Sunday morning cartoon show order was always the same. With fun segments of Schoolhouse Rock and The More You Know sprinkled in. You knew what time your favorite cartoon aired - and could plan your breakfast accordingly.

The classrooms of my Catholic Elementary school were abuzz with the newest episodes each Monday morning. Notes were compared. Did you see what debauchery Gargamel got up to this week? Can you believe Penny got Inspector Gadget out of yet another scrape? I am so getting a Cabbage Patch Premie for Christmas! (Yes, we fantasized over a premature baby. What did we know? The ads told us it was desirable. No words.)

Saturday and Sunday morning cartoons were the ties that bound our generation.

"Saturday-morning cartoon" is a colloquial term for the original animated series and live-action programming that was typically scheduled on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the United States on the "Big Three" television networks. The genre's popularity had a broad peak from the mid-1960s through the mid-2000s

- Wikipedia (know it all)

Today’s toddlers and preschool set still happily bond over shared animated moments. From Fireman Sam to Paw Patrol to The Wonderpets, my kids’ generation has their own safe haven of a cartoon childhood. I even snuck in Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street and The Muppets into my kids cartoon repertoire. Mostly, let’s be honest, for me.

That’s the core of cartoons: shared experiences you giddily recount and sometimes sing to one another. Bonus points to fellow Gen Xers who create animated family films woven with the music of our generation. I’m looking at you Shrek with The Monkee’s “I’m a Believer” and you Sing movies for all the songs, but especially “True Colors” and “Wake me up before you go-go.”

Do I slide the funnies sections of the Sunday paper across the dining room table to my kids? Like my father once did to me? No.

Did the magic of that experience marinate in me? Creating new recipes for shared happiness? Yes, yes it did.

You can find me and mine singing “Let it Go!” at the top of our lungs. Also, Olivia Rodrigo’s Vampire, which has no associated animation, yet would make a killer song for the Hotel Transylvania series.

Or, Scooby Doo.

Jinkies! Looks like we have another mystery on our hands. Who’s this week’s monster of menace? (Unmasking my terribly wonderful costume as a wise and unbothered mother.) It’s Ms. Sheridan!

And I'd have gotten away with it, too, if it weren't for those meddling kids.

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