What I Learned From Roadrunner

For better or worse, my comps are done. Unless, of course, I failed, in which case the whole thing starts all over again.

Anyway, Monda suggested that I write something frivolous. While I didn't actually write anything new, I found this in my notebook that I wrote with my freshmen class. We were responding to one of Monda's Easy Street Prompts.

We only got two channels on television: 3 and 10. These were the Springfield Missouri affiliates for NBC and CBS. My dad did not really "believe" in television, but kept one for the nightly news. Our television watching was pretty limited, when I was young. But we were allowed to watch all the television we wanted on Saturday mornings. So we watched whatever came on.

Evidently, Looney Tunes were cheap. They were certainly widely available. Looney Tunes came on every Saturday morning-- sometimes twice. There was the Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour on channel 10 and then the Children's Hour on channel 3 also showed Looney Toons cartoons, as well as Davey and Goliath. Roadruner was my least favorite of all these. It bothered me, what happened to Wile E. Coyote, Super Genius. I felt sorry for him. After all, I grew up in a world where people hunted for their meat, so I didn't find it all that bad that Coyote wanted to eat the bird. But I did learn some important lessons from the show, nonetheless.

This is what I learned.

1. I learned that being smart is one thing, but being clever is quite another.
2. Life rarely works out like it does on paper.
3. We rarely make good decisions when we are hungry.
4. Machines are only as good as the operator.
5. I learned not to believe advertising. People who are selling things do not have my best interests at heart.
6. Some name brands can't be trusted.
7. If the first anvil that I buy from ACME explodes, so will the second.
8. Never buy anything from my enemies.
9. And, most importantly, I learned that the deck is stacked. Not everyone gets an even playing field.
10. And some people just go hungry at the end of the day, no matter how hard they work.

While there were certainly shows that I enjoyed more growing up, I am not sure that any other show taught me so much about life.