I was a Romper Room graduate.
Since Hollywood has shared his Bozo Show story, I will regale you with my Romper Room tale. It is unbelievable, and you will scoff and chide, but I swear to you it is true.
As pointed out in the link above, this show was syndicated with local versions in various markets. If you can't remember it, check out the Magic Mirror pic, that might jog your memory. In St. Louis at the time (which was 1961, when dinosaurs roamed the earth), our "Miss" was "Miss Joan." We later encountered her at W.T. Grant's and my mother embarrassed her by saying, "Little Chuckie here was on your show!" when you knew she probably didn't remember me. Although considering the circumstances, maybe she did.
The firewalking part of the show, which was broadcast live (or, as Sam Donaldson would say, LIVE!), was when Miss Whatever asked the kids some questions to get their cute and funny answers. These kids were in first and second grade, about 6 or 7 years old. These revolved around things like, "What are you building there?" addressed to the kid with the Lincoln Logs.
At one point, all of us kids were issued horses on a stick (high tech toys for 1961, to be sure). As we mounted our horses (no cracks) for a romp around the tiny studio to some lame live piano music, Miss Joan asked some of the kids where they wanted to go on their ride. Other kids said things like "California." When she got to me, I said, "I want to go to the bathroom."
Never before or since have I seen so many adults who wanted to laugh and knew they couldn't. Miss Joan escorted me immediately off the set, and as I went through all the cameramen and other workers, they were all holding their hands over their mouths, fit to burst. (Just like me, heh.)
My mother, in the "green room," was laughing heartily and said, "Well, they asked him!" One of the guys said he knew that someday some kid would answer that question that way.
I still remember to push my chair in when I leave the table, because that's what Do Bees do. (As it says on the linked website, "young people today, please keep in mind they are NOT saying "doobie".)
7 comments:
ha ha, doobie!
I watched my local version of this show growing up. I remember being very confused when the lady changed and they used the same name. (Miss Sally, I think. Or Cindy.)
I was never on the show. At the end of our local version, she would look into the Magic Mirror and say the first names of kids she "saw". They were really just common names, I suppose, and they hoped they'd cover most of the kids watching at one time or another.
I only remember her saying my name a couple of times. Maybe only once. She used to say my sister's name all the time. (grrr...)
Yes, our Miss Joan changed to Miss Lois after a while, and that confused Poor Young Me. I had believed that they actually used names of kids who wrote in, or maybe were on the show, but evidently they just said some names. If your name was Snicklefritz, I guess you were always disappointed.
Too funny! I think coffee just came out of my nose.
I do have this weird mental picture of you being like 3 feet tall riding a stick horse around some tv studio but your head and face are as they are now. Surreal.
very funny. I remember Romper Room and Miss Jean but was never on the show. I WAS on the local cretaure feature show in Omaha Nebraska. The host was "Dr. Sanguinary". The guy was a raging alcoholic but it was good tv.
Wow. We even had an Australian version. I never knew that was a US show. Same horse-poles, and ended with the mirror with no mirror ("And I can see Kate and Bruce...") .
This past Saturday, I was balancing a particularly large XHTML book on my head, while my darling wife tested her theory that squeezing my nostrils would make it fall off. I started to sing the song from Romper Room that they played while the kids walked around balancing baskets on their noggins "I won't let my basket fall...".
Weird co-incidence!
Nice to know that Romper Room crossed the ocean! And man, those songs do stick your head way too long.
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