Dharma Bum

Strange things happen when I starve myself for two weeks and then throw myself off my sleep schedule. Today I passed out around 7 AM, and had a dream about an obscure Spanish cartoon based on Dutch children’s novels that was on in 1987 – so I must’ve watched this show from the time I was two years old until I was three.

I’d like to introduce you to the people who got me through my terrible twos, David and Lisa. They are gnomes who live in a tree stump with two pet mice and a cricket. At 399 years old, David was a doctor, and Lisa was a full time great great grandmother.

Here is a little background on the species in case you aren’t familiar with them: Gnomes are about six inches tall and weigh about eleven ounces. They have human sized hearts, and live to be exactly 400 years old. They are seven times stronger than a human being, but prefer to live life away from society by communing with nature.

My dream was just little bits and pieces of the show, as well as I could remember it. I mostly remembered the funny hats and rosey cheeks, and the grandfatherly voice of Tom Bosley. I wanted to reconnect with the series and buy the DVDs, thinking this’d be a good thing to recommend to some of my friends to show their kids. But given how fucking insane children’s entertainment is today, I don’t know if a two year old would be into it these days.

Think about it. What’s a two year old’s TV life like today? Giant talking bananas in pajamas come down the stairs to wake you up. Then, at breakfast, a baby’s disembodied face in the sun squeaks at you to warn of forthcoming rotund seamonkey things with TV’s in their bellies doing some repetitive act for half an hour, and then WHOA, it’s a fucking singing/dancing purple dinosaur! Follow this up with a pink haired lolita doing kartwheels surrounded by creeeeepy puppets, and then some little mexican chick with her monkey comes out of nowhere to interrogate you about where her backpack is so she and her boot wearing monkey buddy can teach you high school spanish.

David the Gnome wasn’t some sort of surreal Teletubbies kind of kiddy show, or a Sesame Street learn how to count and read thing. It was a fantasy world based behind reality. While the tone was often jovial and friendly, it had some really heady morality and lifestyle lessons for kids to grab onto. It stressed the need to respect the environment, love your fellow man unconditionally, and avoid getting grinded into fleshy pulp by trolls.

I am going to order some DVDs off Amazon UK, but I think I’m gonna warn the parents in my life of the dangers this show could bring about. I’ve been watching episodes on youtube all day, and I’ve got to conclude that it was a thrilling, heart warming and exciting show, and I’m kinda glad I didn’t get every lesson it offered on the first run through when I was two years old.

Because at the end of the first season, Lisa and David died at the tender age of 400.