A version of this article was originally posted on my old website, Biggerboat, on 1/31/2007.
I’ve often declared my life’s goal to make every day feel like Saturday morning. If there’s anything that makes me regret the linear direction of space-time and ache for the past as all mortals do, it’s that I can never truly recapture what it feels like to be a young kid on a Saturday morning.
Growing up in the 1980s following the FCC’s deregulation of children’s programming, Saturday morning offered a bevy of options for the child who, having woken at six a.m. to enjoy as much of his school-free day as possible, would wolf down three bowls of sugar-loaded cereal while watching colorful talking animals and consequence-free cartoon violence. True, many of the shows were little more than half-hour advertisements for toys, or candy, or Mr. T. But what Saturday morning cartoons really offered children was a time when television catered just to them. No boring adult dramas or shows they weren’t allowed to watch. Saturday morning TV belonged to kids.
