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| Feb. 24, 2009 -Lessons Learned Romper Room |
Are you of an age that you remember the Romper Room? No? Vaguely? Well, boys and girls, Miss Carol wants to tell you special people a short tale. Long before there was a SpongeBob Squarepants under the sea, a Wiggle in Australia or the neighborhoods of Sesame Street or Mr. Roger’s, in the late fifties and early sixties I was introduced to the magic of a small room. Not our small, neat living room that housed our modern miracle (a small black-and-white television), but the magical room I entered when I watched that one-and-only television weekdays on a show called the Romper Room.
The Romper Room came into my living room every weekday so that I learned right and wrong manners and safety rules from mascot Do Bee and the bad habits to avoid if I didn’t want to become a Don’t Bee. I also watched Captain Kangaroo several locally and nationally produced shows, but the Room and its lovely hostesses, (one at a time, but often different from the ones telecasting in different cities) held a special place in my heart. Miss Louise and her ilk taught me to march around my room with purpose, to listen, and then to sit very still while her “Magic Mirror” was out looking right at me (I hoped) through her television screen and into my living room.
Many of the hostesses were recruited former kindergarten teachers in the days before pre-school classes, and had the most wonderful voices and demeanors when they ended the show with:
Romper bomper stomper boo
Tell me, tell me, tell me do---
Magic Mirror tell me today
Did all my friends have fun at play?
Then as if by magic she would recite the names of the boys and girls she saw through her television and from her magic mirror. Oh how straight and tall I would sit right in front of the screen so she would see me being a Do Bee quiet sitter!
But you know my readers, as adults, sometimes memory and reality collide. I went on YouTube the other day and saw some clips of the actual television shows (very few survive). But the magic mirror looked like a plumbing tool that was made over in a recycled art project that Ms. Judy and I might have come up with for our girl scout troops years ago. The later versions of the show had psychedelic colors emanating from the mirror’s rim (which still would have been in black and white or shades of gray on our small television), but in the few clips I saw—“she” that wonderful angel on television that I saw one little boy in her studio try to kiss, did not call my name. Over the many years and cities and countries, I am sure my name was called many times—but not last night as I searched the internet clips. Oh the later hostesses included names and then each said something like “and all” her “special friends”, but if your name wasn’t called, I remember thinking last night, maybe I wasn’t being good enough and I should have tried harder. WHOA! I never remember feeling badly about my name’s omission until now...but I did last night and it is going to ruin my chemo day if I can’t snap out of it fast. So it is worth a late night ponder. And I decided two things:
Sometimes I would so much rather be like everyone else who is not so special as to be singled out. Sometimes —as in a cancer diagnosis-- it is better not to be singled out for recognition. But more about this self pity and how I conquered it in my next blog.
And my second thought was more positive. Sometimes as an adult maybe—even for a short while you lose your sense of imagination, your sense of wonder, your sense of feeling special—especially if you think of yourself in that other special category: Cancer Carol or Chemo Carol. I do not want to be a Don’t Bee, so I will put on my funny socks, my odd hats and my smile and head off to meet my newest group of friends tomorrow and do it not because I expect recognition, but because I want to and it is the right thing, for me, to do.
For being in the chemo room can be really depressing yet I try to cheer myself up by making jokes, wearing funny hats or wigs and some antics that I guess are not very appropriate to the somberness of people in this stage of life—but I can’t help it. One of my doctors was concerned because another one thought my behavior, since learning of my cancer, was inappropriate. It seems I am too happy for a cancer patient and sometimes my demeanor and smiles seem not to be a good fit for the hospital and chemo room. I think they misinterpret my attitude: it is not because I am glad I have cancer, nor that I am such a happy person all the time, but everyone has something they deal with and this chronic problem just happens to me mine. But I share this problem with so many people and I really do feel better when I can cheer up some of the other people I meet when they are having a bad or sad day. I need to keep thinking that my condition is chronic nuisance—not terminal and terrible and that all the horrible side effects will be worth a reprieve some day that will allow me to live out some, if not most of the rest of my life, without having to come back to this Romper Room Again.
I meet wonderful people who have Been There and Won That (hence the name of two of MorningStar’s Teal Ribbon Project Free Cancer Answer Seminars with local inspirational stories of people who have come through the cancer maze) and those that are in the chemo room now with me starting or continuing their journeys with cancer. Many come in to the room and seemingly without complaint get hooked up to these IV machines filled with the right elixir to hopefully put their disease in remission. I am in awe of their strength because, I always seem to complain (I can be a big baby about needles and there are lots of those) and I feel if I can make up for my Don’t Bee behavior with a few hellos and smiles when I can, then Miss Louise might be proud of me after all.
You Tube Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBxeCV0bIcU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSuWW-m2UzY&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td1KAgrYUGA&NR=1
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Posted by morningstar on 2009-02-24 07:44:33 | Rating: | Views: 222
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