Cartoon Character Flashbacks

Though my childhood memories are filled with mostly with being outdoors, or at least active, its amazing how quickly an odd turn of phrase can bring vision to mind that I can only explain has having watched many strange cartoons as a child.

My generation was not doled out the pretty pabulum that seems to be children’s entertainment today, unless they are allowed access to the other extreme – violence and gore laden video games.

We did not have pretty pastel colored ponies and fluffy, pudgy, purple dinosaurs. Warner Bros. gave us roosters, coyotes, rabbits (hares, not cute bunnies) and my all time favorite – skunks. Disney gave us a goofy looking hound, dour ducks, mice and many humans that were fairly attractive villains (evil without the CSI level crime scene). I also remember the drunk mouse who had a singing electric razor for a pal (what a way to calm little boy’s fears of their first buzz cut!), a moronic but comical vulture and the owlet who became the crooner of swing dance against his family’s instance on opera. It seems a few studios, like Pixar, have attempted to continue the tradition of dancing and singing bugs and other amusingly distorted real world entities in order to bridge the chasm between sickeningly sweet cuteness and nightmare inducing horror.

But what got me pondering all this was not another session in front of a TV, which I apparently did more often than I realized, but a visit to my office by the maintenance crew.

They were on a pest control mission to rid of us some uninvited, non-musical ants. During the discussion it was mentioned that another office was experiencing “German roaches”. Now aside from never having bothered to learn the nationalities of said species of vermin, I really didn’t pay much attention to the comment until colleague asked what are German cockroaches. I chimed in with “They are the noisy ones in the corner going for the beer and bratwurst.” My quip may have been on the pitiful side of witty, but the vision in my head was straight out of a 1960’s black and white cartoon. It may be a good thing for my office that my drawing skills are even worse than my jokes.

Damen und Herren, presenting the Deutschen Shaben! The lights go up and the band starts as a line of cockroaches standing up on their hind legs, wearing lederhosen, and each carrying a stein of beer, dance their way onto the stage in a multi-legged version of a Rockette’s line.

And they say video games are corrupting the younger generations?!?!?!
I think I need one of those beers instead of my morning coffee!