Aesop's Fables

In the early 1980's, a video rental shop near us offered a special deal. You could rent a Video Player with a small color television and two videos for about ten dollars and keep it for a weekend. There are two times this could have been. It was right after I got out of the hospital, so it was either 1981 after Ben was born, and I was recovering from a C-Section, or two years later when I had another surgery.

John went down and picked up this bundle for the family's entertainment. He got an adult movie and a kid's movie. I remember what the adult movie was. We watched about a minute of it, and realized it wasn't what John thought it was. It went back in the bag quickly. Every once in awhile I tease John about the Dallas Pizza Girls Mystery.

The kid's movie was more our speed. It was Aesop's fables, and it was great. Tighe was about eight or ten, and we had never had a color television, so he was really enjoying the whole video rental idea. There would be a musical interlude, quite a good classical piece with the title of the fable coming up, then a quality cartoon of the fable. That would be followed by another musical interlude.

During one of the songs I said to Tighe, "Do you realize that these stories are all about 2500 years old?"

He looked at me with the sort of disgust that only a growing child can show to a parent, and in his infinite wisdom replied, "Get real, Mom. If they were that old, they'd be in black and white!"