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Breaking my usual rule...a photo. But one day I'm going to paint this. Close enough.
My
granddaughter has been staying with me this week. I love it when she comes for a
visit, for any number of reasons…not the least of which is that she’s
interesting. A little quirky. I don’t know where she gets this.
She
is a
person of routine. She enjoys sameness. For example, she likes to get up
early,
walk to the donut shop, whereupon we are to purchase precisely 12 donut
holes.
No more. No less. Then we walk to the neighborhood coffee house, order
coffee
for me and milk or hot chocolate for her (there is at least a modicum of
flexibility here), and we sit and eat our donut holes. On other days, we
stay in and I make her exactly 2 pieces of bacon and two toasts...one
with strawberry jelly (it must be strawberry) and one without.
We can have
some variation in routine during the late morning through afternoon, but we
must be finished with said routine by 6:00 so that she can watch “The Lone
Ranger”. Yes…the one from the 50s. In glorious back and white.
This is one
of her quirks. She likes old TV shows that were filmed in black and white. “I
Love Lucy”…and she likes her some “Roy Rogers” (I never fully realized just how
lame “Roy Rogers” was until I sat and watched it with her one day). But I
wonder…is this quirkiness on her part, or does it make complete sense?
I think it
may be the latter, though she does come from – as my brother once aptly said in
regard to our family – “a long line of crazy people” and a certain amount of
eccentric behavior is to be expected. But doesn’t it make sense that an
eight-year-old would enjoy a purely black and white story of good vs. evil?
Simple and unpretentious. No Oscar-nominated performances and no Pulitzer
prizes for literature. Just a man in a mask (which apparently completely
obscures his identity) whose compulsion in life is to right all wrongs, and to
do so anonymously.
I write from
time to time about the differences in the way people of my generation were
raised, not only by our parents, but by society in general. Go play. Be home by dark. Or one of my favorites...she'll get over it - kids are resilient.
But I think
that in some ways we were the better for it (assuming we survived all
the broken bones and bug spray). “Roy Rogers”, “The Lone Ranger”…”Looney
Tunes” were written
specifically for kids and not for their parents. And they certainly were
not
written for the NEA or any other educational organization. We may have
been
under-protected, but at least we got to just be kids for a while.
I suppose
I’m making the case that children are comforted by black and white, and that
the shows of that era may have been onto something, whether accidentally or
purposefully. This is right. This is
wrong. The Lone Ranger and Tonto are
good. The bank robbers are bad
(perhaps they didn’t eat their vegetables, brush their teeth and drink their Ovaltine).
Of
course, eventually
they’ll have to realize that there is gray. And that most things are
multicolored and complicated. But for a while…they can revel in the
innocence
of glorious black and white.
That having
been said, she probably does have a genetic disposition for eccentricity. Her
dad (my
son) - for many years - had his own imaginary kingdom over which he was
the absolute ruler. The kingdom changed from time to time, but one thing
always remained constant: he had no parents. And in high school he
pretended to be a French exchange student in one of his classes. For a
year. But that's another post.
