I bought the first season of the Animaniacs yesterday.

This is something I’d intended to do for a while, but never got around to it. Then Tamu passed her Dot t-shirt on to me at the Canada Day BBQ (there’s a long story here about how there was one of these shirts left for sale at Nebula, just before I started working there, and the day I went in to buy it Tamu had purchased it; fifteen years later she has been weeding out her wardrobe and remembered I loved this shirt, so passed it along to me in pretty much perfect condition to use as a sleep shirt, yay!) and the boy saw me wearing it and asked who the cute creature in the graphic was. So I tried to explain the Animaniacs to him. Anyone who has seen the Animaniacs knows that such an explanation is doomed. So I resolved to pick up a season of the show, because it was rather wrong that I didn’t own any.

The boy was initially disappointed — I told him I’d picked up a surprise and he must have thought it was something he’d asked for. “But I don’t want this, I didn’t ask for it,” he said, on the verge of tears. HRH had a little talk with him about how nice it was of me to buy him a present, and how I wanted to share something fun that I liked with him. So he said we could put the first disc in. Initially he sat as far away from the television as he could and was a bit bemused, but gradually I saw him move closer to the TV, and then he really got into it. “I love the Animanaics, they’re my favourite movie!” he exclaimed somewhere around the end of the first episode. “Is there more?” Oh, oh yes, my son. There is lots more.

In fact, we finished the first disc last night, staying up an hour later than his usual bedtime to do so (“Just one more, Mama, please, please?”). He curled up on my lap and rested his head on my shoulder, determined to see it through to the end. “Hey, I have him!” he said at one point, pointing to Yakko, and he’s right. Once upon a time when Tal, t! and I were throughly immersed on the Animanaics, finding a delightful parallel between the three characters and our own personalities (oh, the song sessions in various cars on various trips!) Tal found stuffed toys of each character and presented the appropriate one to each of us. When Liam was born he passed his Yakko along to him. Until now, Liam’s never really been interested in it, but that should change around nap time today. (I think my Dot is still in a box. I shall remedy that.)

I am charmed by the fact that the boy crawled into bed with me this morning and asked to watch the Animaniacs instead of his regular Friday-at-home-with-Mum cartoons. Why, yes, yes you can, my son. Muah-hah-hah.

This is also slightly bittersweet for me because the only video I had of the show was a best-of complied for me by Emru. I lost the video in the last move (although I’m sure it’s somewhere in a box that hasn’t been opened in a while) and our VCR died anyhow, so we wouldn’t have been able to watch it. But I’ll always associate the Animaniacs with him as well as Tamu, Tal, and t! — a noble host indeed. When the series was first released on DVD Emru tried to get a review copy for me through fps, but it didn’t materialize. I did get to review the first season of Pinky & the Brain, though, which was an acceptable consolation prize. It has still never been quite right that I own a season of that, but not the Animaniacs.)

Today we’re bound for the EcoMuseum, and I’m going to sneak my three Animaniacs CDs into the car as another surprise. Whee!