Somehow, in the course of plodding through a day-to-day existance, I've inherited some very very old Highlights magazines. Though I don't think we were ever subscribers, these things were always the canonical reading for any kid stuck in a waiting room for a long time, too old to get caught messing around with the beaded wire thingy and too uninterested in the August 1986 Better Homes and Gardens. Also, they were notorious for sending sheets of amazing dinosaur stickers, which in comparison with nickels from UNICEF and V.A. sponsered return address labels, were pretty damn sweet and didn't make you feel really bad.

In my youth, the staples of these things were always the Find-Hidden-Objects-in-Picture pages, which somehow amassed enough popularity in the late eighties to bring about a Nickelodeon game show, and of course, Goofus and Gallant, who were so tremendously ridiculous that all five-year-olds mocked them behind their organizedly-disheveled/well-groomed backs (respectively.) The Timbertoes--simply creepy.

Anyways, I've enough excerpts from these magazines to fill several posts, so be adequately forewarned.

I'm glad Papa is covering all his bases this time. Last time, he left out the whole "and talk about them" part, and we wallowed around the house in a traumatically ambiguous hell of our own neuroses and futile desires to be accepted. The house smelled of marinara and burnt hair for days, and we somehow lost all the men's shirts.

But now, everything is totally awesome!

Purpose of Fun: To redress the ills of domestic abuse; to indicate Highlights' broadening audience as bear cartoons make their push to the passive-agressive dad base.

Lesson Learned: You know. It's nice when Dad stops it.

I tell my friends how glad I am that they're not like Marcus Mefirst. People like Marcus Mefirst, you see, stuff their faces with their own egos. My friends--Eggos. Except, of course, this analogy is faulty, as it would be terrifically obscene if my friends were to stuff their faces with such amounts of Eggo.

Purpose of Fun: Tries to teach me about how Launcelot is a whiny fool, and how whiny fools get made fun of in letters to Highlights magazine.

Lesson Learned: Be scared of the unknown, namely the mumpity mice. Also, June is eight.

Carrying on.

I didn't know that Goofus and Gallant were originally elves. Apparently, this decision was made to tap into the important elvish market demographic that was so powerful from the twenties to fifties. The pivotal change to humans probably came in light of the vast genocide, when we caught wind of their plans to take our supplies of marshmallows and wives. Who the hell knows why they wanted our marshmallows.

Purpose of Fun: Moral indoctrination through elfin example.

Lesson Learned: If squirrels don't naturally frolick to you, you are a wretched snot; where a quick decision regarding spooking/not spooking cows is absolutely necessary, opt for latter choice.

Please note that this was placed in no context; it shared the page with nothing at all related to gestation or farm animals or zoology or whatever. It simply rested at the very bottom of a page, entirely unrelated to anyting else.

Purpose of Fun: Make kids feel smart for thinking of alligator and brontosaurus eggs as other things they should have listed.

Lesson Learned: Expect conversations with a chicken to be notably terse and cold; don't angrily smash your muscovie eggs after the typical 28 days gestation; scoldy dad won't appreciate the hideous duck fetuses on the kitchen floor.

The answers are not given.

Purpose of Fun: Confuse children early into nihilism

Lesson Learned:: Whenever life hands you a lion, remember that somebody made it that small by squeezing it like that. Your concept of an apple cider press, though not at all novel, is thus quite far within the realm of possibility.

Part two: soon.

(Oh, and...images probably copyright Highlights.)