Mr. Morton walked down the street

Mr. Morton walked. Mr. Morton talked to his cat. Mr. Morton talked. Mr. Morton was very lonely. Mr. Morton was. Mr. Morton is the subject of the sentence and what the predicate says he does.

Ok I don't own it yet, but my sister picked it up last week. And we spent a fun-filled Friday evening full of nostalgia. Singing along to almost every single song, gasping when those we barely remembered came on "I'd forgotten this one!" Gasping when those came on that we saw quite frequently and had all but forgotten about, and then wondering how we could have forgotten that one, they showed it so often!

We also amazed my grandmother by how much of the songs we remembered. It also amazed her to realize that tucked into the sugar cereal induced coma-like state of Saturday morning cartoon watching, there was actually educational stuff going on. "That's probably why you all are so smart!" Well it didn't hurt us any that's for sure.

For those of you who don't remember what life was like pre-cable, there didn't used to be a 24 hour Cartoon Network. I'm not knocking it, I love the Powerpuff Girls, and Ed, Edd, & Eddy as much as the next guy. But Saturday mornings used to be complete kid time. I'd be up at 6 AM and the TV would be on. On low of course as not to wake the 'rents, chowing down on my Cookie Crisp (and yes I remember back when the box had just the cartoon thief and cop, before there was the silly dog howling COOOOOKIE Crisp). And the cartoons went on and on. Until about 1 PM I think. That's when The Littles came on and after that it was back to real tv. There were also plenty of kids shows with real kids. Not nearly as good as the cartoons, but hey it was all tv right? Like Kids Incorporated, where you can watch a very young Jennifer Love Hewitt strut her stuff.

But Schoolhouse Rock was tucked in between all the other cool things going on. As a filler of sorts, and it's amazing how much of that stuff sticks. There's a wholeCD if you haven't seen it before, of bands doing theme songs from their favorite Saturday morning hits. Conjunction Junction is in there too. I'm not the only one it stuck with. Of course my favorite was always "Lolly Lolly Lolly get your adverbs here."

I also can't tell you how much I'd wished some other kids had watched Schoolhouse Rock when they were growing up. I've always liked language, so Grammar Rock was always my favorite, and when I took German as my secondary language for my Foreign Language degree, it amazed me how little other people knew about how common English grammar worked. German is so similar to English in structure, if they had just learned that adjectives describe things, and adverbs modify verbs etc etc, they may not have needed that tutor, or whined quite so much about how hard German was. It amazed me they could even form English sentences.

Of course I'm not exempt from language mistakes. Like the summer I spent in Middlebury, I made tons in Spanish. The subjunctive is enough to drive a non-native speaker insane. But when Andy came up to visit, I think I suffered some severe brain damage. I'd been speaking nothing but Spanish for 5 weeks, then having to switch to English threw me for a bit of a loop, but when he switched into German on me I literally froze. I couldn't move, speak, or barely breathe. My brain all but collapsed, trying to wrap around what language I was supposed to be understanding at the moment. He of course thought that was the funniest thing ever in the universe. It is now, but I don't think I'll ever forget that feeling of complete paralysis.

Next time on Laura's nostalgia page "I hanker for a hunk of cheese!"