Now I have the Blue Beetle’s song from Electric Company going through my head.

No, not the Ted Kord Blue Beetle. The children’s show had an ineffectual superhero called The Blue Beetle played by Jim Boyd, and he sang this song whenever people asked him to do something dangerous and/or impossible:

I would, if I could,
but I can’t, so I won’t.
Forgive me if I don’t.
I hope that everything is understood…
that I would, if I could,
but I can’t, so I won’t.

I’m going to be 36 next month and I’ve had this stuck in my head for 30 years.

You know, it’s entirely possible that the Children’s Television Workshop approach to educating children is totally wrong. I mean, our generation was the first one educated by this method of catchy visuals and singable songs repeated over and over on TV in hopes that kids would absorb letters, numbers and words just as beer ads reinforce drinking beer for fun. (Seriously, they studied beer ads when creating Sesame Street.)

Well, great. Thanks a lot. Decades after I learned the number 11 I still remember that stupid skit about the painter who paints an 11 on a window and then someone washes it off while he’s packing up his brushes and he mourns, “My ELEVEN!” And there’s this little tune that plays as a maraschino cherry rolls down a little metal track, and as it hits three spinners in a row, they sing “One…two…three!” I have entire days at IBM where I’m trying to do my TTR processing and all I can hear is “DOO DO DODODODODODOOOO DOO DO DODODODODODO ONE TWO THREE!!!” No, those idiots at CTW never did think about what will happen if we impressionable kids get their dumb songs locked into our brains long, long after we learned how to say agua and to not pronounce a silent e.

How can I get rid of the vivid memory of Rita Moreno asking, “Hey Pete’s Pop’s Pal, is this your pickle?”

Also, I think Judy Graubart’s outfit as Jennifer of the Jungle was a bit too sexy to show a kid. My wife keeps wondering why I buy her leopard prints.