Warm Fuzzy Feelings

I'm sitting here with Matthew watching "Wonderpets," a show about a duckling, a hamster and a turtle that go around the world saving baby animals from peril. And they sing. Lots of singing. And helping. Lots of helping.

Today's episode finds the Wonderpets saving baby sea lions from the ocean. Hello? Wonderpets? They're sea lions. They're supposed to be in the ocean. Nevertheless, Wonderpets save the day by pulling the baby sea lions from the ocean. Wonderpets aren't the sharpest superheroes.

There's also the crisis of one stalk of celery for the trio of Wonderpets, how will they ever decide who gets the celery? Guess what? They share. How sweet. Another disaster averted.

Now they're saving a baby kangaroo who is lost. Evidently, the Wonderpets live in cages in a school house, and after the kids leave for the day, they get calls on their tin can phone from exotic places like Australia, from lost baby kangaroos. Now, if the baby kangaroo can find the phone number for a bunch of Wonderpets and make an overseas call on a tin can, don't you think he's smart enough to find his mother?

Anyway, the Wonderpets take their Wonderpet-mobile and fly from the school house to Australia, being sure to pass over the Sydney Opera House before making their way to the outback to help poor Joey out. They find Joey and thanks to a helpful singing koala, they're hot on the trail of Mama Kangaroo.

Now they've encountered an emu. The duckling with a speech impediment is telling the emu that the duckling himself is quite large. Impressive. The emu stomps the duckling into the ground points the way toward Mama Kangaroo. Duckling tries to fly high to see Mama Kangaroo, but fails because he's just too small. The other Wonderpets reaffirm his duck-ness and congratulate him on a good try. I think duckling has some self-esteem issues.

Now they have climbed up a huge rock and spied Mama Kangaroo. There's a joyful reunion. Now they're having a celery-bration with celery on the barbie, cooked by Mama Kangaroo who just happens to have a grill and a stalk of celery nearby. I'm not kidding. Everyone celery-brates by eating grilled celery and the Wonderpets return to their cages in the school house. When my hamster used to get out, she never returned to her cage. I guess she wasn't a Wonderpet.
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I just erased several rambling paragraphs on "kids these days" and my parenting dilemma of sheltering my children from real life/exposing them so they don't wake up one day at age 31 and find out that life isn't fair then they have a life crisis and begin questioning everything they've been taught and end up in some hut in Cambodia "trying to find themselves." I think they need to know life isn't fair from day one. (You know, sometimes your diaper is wet just a little longer than you want - that's life, kid. Sometimes you get strained peas when you really wanted strained carrots. Too bad.) Or maybe I'm just cynical. Or maybe the Wonderpets have just really aggravated me and I shouldn't be watching preschool shows anymore so that Matthew can enjoy the few years of innocent bliss where hamsters, ducklings and turtles can save the world. Yeah . . . that's probably it.