I believe in teaching tolerance.  We must all learn to live and let live.  We should embrace our differences whether they be religious, lifestyle, race, sexual orientation and so on.  Being that I have most of that covered I have moved on to another group to try to tolerate.  This “new” group has proven to be the biggest challenge in my mostly liberal, progressive life.  Over the years I have grown as person, and a dad by building up a tolerance for (deep breath) children’s television characters. 

I love Barney and Barney loves me.  Blue has a clue.  I am a closet Sesame Street/Sesame Workshop fiend (I guess I just came out of the closet).  From Big Bird to Elmo those guys can do no wrong in my book.  Bob the Builder has an enviable management style.  Boobah, Teletubbies, and the Wiggles freak me out but I don’t hate them.  And if I say anything bad about Thomas the Tank Engine I may have a runaway kid on my hands so I will stay zipped.   However there is one show that to me is simply unpalatable.  It makes me long for seventh grade science where I had to purchase a disecting kit in order to expose the internal workings of a certain type of amphibian.  I will throw myself down the stairs of the Empire State Building or leap from the torch of the Statue of Liberty before I sit through an entire episode of the most nausea inducing children’s show since the beginning of nausea inducing children’s shows.  What show holds my ire like no other?  Ribert & Robert’s Wonderworld.  This show has single-handedly set back my tolerance movement by decades.  

If you have never seen the aforementioned abomination, consider yourself lucky.  When I hear my son stirring in his bedroom early in the morning I often crawl out of bed only to see a friggin’ grinning frog dancing across his TV screen while invisible children chant “Go Ribert, go Ribert.”  Yes Ribert go.  Please go!  As for Robert, well, he makes me conjure images of Steven King’s It.  That guy must be the human form of something unworldly; something that has crossed over from another dimension to wreak havoc on the sanity of parents.  Pure dread creeps into my chest as I think about that show and of the fact that tomorrow morning is only hours away.  

But my son loves it, and (gulp) I guess that’s all that matters.  I’m in the process of building tolerance one therapeutic blog post at a time.Â