Coping mechanisms & children's cartoons

Oh god I guess I can return to normal posting now e_e help us all.

Anyway, if you follow me on Tumblr and/or Twitter you might notice that I have a strange and questionable love for cartoons. Sometimes it's all part of reliving my tattered childhood (which is another post all together) and sometimes it's just what's on. Hmm... "cartoons" has a childish quality attached so I guess I should use the more grown up ~animation~. I think if I hadn't done a film studies minor I would have tried to do something animation based.

But anyway. Specifically, in this case, I really am talking about children's toons. I don't disguise or hide my love for something for kids *shrug* in fact, I often find children's programming in general very helpful. For an example, look at the subject heading.

This started as an off hand crack I made to a friend about watching the show Ni Hao Kai-Lan to cope with my depression. I thought about it and realized, kind of horrified, it's true. If you've never seen Kai-Lan, it's a cutesy show in the vein of Dora the Explorer except Kai-Lan is Chinese and her show is more focused on getting younger viewers to express their feelings and be considerate of others'. Kai-Lan's friends are mostly animals (monkey, tiger, elephant and... koala) and embody some kind of emotional trope I guess you'd say--the tiger, Rintoo, is often selfish and has to be taught how to share and how not to brag. The koala Tolee is sensitive & smart and afraid to tell people how he feels sometimes. And Kai-lan acts like a mediator between them all in their adventures. I remember sitting on the bed wondering WHEN THESE PEOPLE SNUCK INTO MY LIFE.

I caught Kai-lan a few times and watched it for kicks, but when I finally figured out what the show was about, it freaked me out. As I've said countless times I'm TERRIBLE at expressing myself meaningfully unless it's, you know, rage or utmost sorrow. And by them of course it's too late. Against my will I started basically relearning shit I guess I should have learned in pre-school. I also learned some nifty tricks to better handle my tutoring duties.

The House of Xands has been going through a crisis lately and me being on summer break and thus kinda stuck inside, I've been looking for more and more shameless escapes from reality; movies, books, endless hours of TV & the internet (again, Twitter), you name it. It's time for a low period it seems! To get rid of the sudden excessive energy I have, I work out. A staple of most interactive kids cartoons is the initiative to be more active, especially modern shows. Sometimes, I criticize this cynically in my head and sometimes I just go with it. It's corny but it takes my mind off things a lot of the time.

I used to make fun of my mom for watching early morning kids shows so often until I realized I'd probably rather watch Sprout then complain about how decidedly unprogressive more "adult" fare is on cable. And now we watch them together and even have favorites. I wonder sometimes where this will lead me and should I be worried? The irony that I dislike kids and yet most of the time I'd rather be around them more often than adults is never lost on me these days, hah.