Afternoon Shows

My little cousin had VHS tapes of Disney movies.  I think the first one we watched together was "The Little Mermaid".  She had most of the lines memorized, and she liked having someone to watch with.
I actually liked it, too.

She also had Davey and Goliath videos, and we watched those, too.  They were kind of odd, and I wasn't really into them.  They clay characters kind of had a weird way of moving.

I can't remember if we watched "Robin Hood", but it's possible we did.  For sure, we watched "The Jungle Book", and I really liked that, too.  I believe she also memorized most of the lines in that movie.

In the afternoons on weekdays, Channel 11 would have the Disney afternoon lineup.  The first one was "Duck Tales" at 3pm.  Then "Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers" at 3:30.  And then "Tale Spin" at 4.  I liked all of those shows, but I was especially excited to see the same characters from "The Jungle Book" in "Tale Spin".  I wasn't too familiar with the characters in the other two shows, but I knew Baloo and Shere Khan.  And then there were commercials for their newest show, "Darkwing Duck", which came on at 4:30, and I liked that one, too.

I remember watching them after school.  I was just at home by myself.  I don't know what my cousin was doing, but I mostly wanted my privacy away from her.  After two weeks, I kind of found her to be annoying.  So I stayed by myself.  I was either reading or drawing while watching TV.  I got some books from the Scholastic order form the school would give out.  One of them was Mad Libs, which I wasn't sure why I got because I wasn't sure what it was.  But anyway, I ended up doing Mad Libs by myself while watching TV alone.  So yeah, it was kind of pathetic.

But I watched that afternoon lineup for years.  When I moved to New Jersey, I came home early one time and got to see what was before those shows.  I believe "Dennis the Menace" came on at 2pm, followed by "Heathcliff" at 2:30.  I hadn't seen those shows before, and I wasn't too crazy about them, but I thought they were okay.

I actually showed "Duck Tales" to my older one many years ago when he was around seven.  Of course, he liked it.  But I liked watching him watch it.  I liked seeing him figuring out the mysteries and seeing his face light up when he realized why things were happening and who was the bad guy and who did what and stuff like that.  He also got to see the other Disney shows because my wife and I had collected their DVDs even before our kids were born.

And then when my younger one started school a couple of years ago, I would play those shows in the same order when he came home.  So after school, he would get to see the same lineup of cartoons I used to watch, just without the commercial.  Eventually, he figured out the order.  We would be watching the credits for "Rescue Rangers" and he would say, "I bet 'Tale Spin' is next".  So that was pretty cool.