Bridging the gap

When it comes to parent-child generational gaps, the one between Emily and I is not very large. 18 and a half years to be exact, but alas, the time of my childhood (80's) is now considered retro. Emily has developed a great fondness for many icons from my past though, which gives us some awesome bonding material, and helps me stay young.

When Emily was 2, we used to go to the local video store every Tuesday. Tuesday was Kids' night and you could rent 2 kids movies for FREE. Yes, that's right F-R-E-E. Since we had just moved out of my mom's house and I was brand new to the world of "paying my own bills", that price was unbeatable. They had a pretty tidy little selection of kids movies, including about 7 Rainbow Brite videos. If you don't know who Rainbow Brite is, you can just leave my blog now, I have nothing to say to you.


My baby Emily fell promptly in love, and we watched hours of adventure in Rainbow Land together (that is until she discovered Barney, and I opted for more entertaining activities, like scrubbing the toilet. Ok, that's a lie, I was probably sleeping.)
Anyways, she still has a fondness for Rainbow Brite, and even dressed up as her for Halloween when she was 6. Most of her friends had no clue who she was, and she was baffled. Who doesn't know Rainbow Brite? Exactly my dear.

Next came Care Bears. Care Bears had quite the retro comeback, so they were everywhere, and for a couple years, they were also everywhere in my house. I think they released 12,000 different ones and every one came with a video.

We stopped at about 20. Every Christmas and Birthday we would get phone calls from relatives to find out if Emily already had this one or that one. We only ended up with duplicates twice. A couple years ago, she traded the whole collection to a neighbor boy for some Pokemon cards.


We're also halfway through the first season of Punky Brewster, and Emily has great plans for Cali for Halloween in a few years. She'd do it herself, but Punky has dark hair. What a shame.

A few days ago we were sitting in the Taco Bell drive thru and I had to pee major bad and I was sharing.
"Oh MAN, I have got to PEEEEEEE! Hurry up car, just get your damn chulupa and go, this is a potty E-merrr-gency" (A la Wacko from Animaniacs (once again, if you have no clue, just....go...get out of here)).
Emily was looking at me like I was nuts, and I was like
"what, that's how Wacko says it"
"who?"

I added some Animaniacs to my Netflix Queue.

She is well versed in the icons of her own generation also, but she'll be the first to tell you that she does NOT like Hannah Montana and she doesn't get what the big deal is about her. She does really like Pokemon and Littlest Pet Shop, and Avril Lavigne, but I can't help but feel pride when she asks me to add Def Leppard and Journey to her Ipod. She's her mother's daughter.

And yes, we've already started the Care Bears brainwashing with Caliana....we have over 20 videos people, someone has to watch them.