Tuesday's Opinions: Remembering Wishbone

And Tuesday's here already!  Time for Tuesday's Opinions!

This week:

Remembering Wishbone

Does the song below sound familiar to you?

If you are like me and grew up with that song, then you know who that dog is.  It's Wishbone!

For those of you not familiar with the show, Wishbone was an adorable, fictional Jack Russell Terrier who lived with his family in a normal suburban town called Oakdale.  While young Joe Talbot and his friends have a little adventure at home, Wishbone daydreams of a classic story with a similar theme.  These classics are novels and tales that we are all familiar with: Oliver Twist, A Tale Of Two Cities, Frankenstein, and The Three Musketeers, to name a few.  Wishbone only ran for about 50 episodes, but it still had a humongous impact on my life.





When I was growing up, my mom and dad were the kind of parents who used family days
to visit museums and libraries.  Heck, if we had nothing better to do, the Wadsworth Atheneum and the Hartford Public Library were our main hangouts!
The library was our go-to place because we had very little TV to occupy our time; we only had 3 basic channels, with PBS being one of them.  My first TV shows were limited to Sesame Street, Barney, and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, but as I got older I began to look at other shows for my visual entertainment.  Wishbone became my main show up until I was about 10 or 11 years old.

I loved Wishbone!  That funny little dog made me want to read.  Going to the library may have helped make me become an avid reader, but it was because of Wishbone that I actually became a bookworm.  Out of the approximately 3 dozen stories Wishbone covered, I have read about 15 of them (which I read because the cute little dog recommended them).  Another 14 are on my TBR (this is the very first TBR list I ever made, by the way), some of which I plan to read pretty soon.  Thanks to this show, I entered middle and high school English with a close familiarity to a lot of the books that were covered.  I was more knowledgeable about the stories than most of my fellow classmates, and thanks to Wishbone's enthusiasm and humor, I was one of the few students who was actually interested in reading the stories all the way through (no Sparknotes for me, thank you very much!).

Every time I think back to that TV series, I get nostalgic.  It was my inspiration for
reading, and for our family eventually getting a dog (our mutt Jake and I shared a lot of stories together too).  Just recently, I started watching episodes again through Youtube, just for old time's sake, and I'm loving every minute of it!



I have a book buying policy that I stick to pretty well: I only buy books that I want my future children to eventually read.  A lot of the books I've purchased were inspired by Wishbone, and now I'm convinced I want to own the TV series.  I don't think there's a show currently out there that can inspire kids to read as much as Wishbone inspired me, and I want my kids to be avid readers like me, so I would want them to enjoy this show as much as I did.  Heck, even if they end up not wanting to, I know I would want to watch it anyway, just for fun!



So, does anyone have a favorite episode?  I'm asking the question without having a favorite myself; I remember most of them with fondness, and it's not helping that my current Wishbone binge is making me super nostalgic.  I think the one that stuck out the most, though, is the episode with the Joan of Arc story.  My mother's side of the family is French Canadian, so of course my mom was totally into this episode; my grandmother was even named Jeanne d'Arc, after this iconic hero.  I think I also remember it because Joan of Arc was burned at the stake and I was upset because I wanted her to win!

For a complete episode list, click here.
For full episodes on Youtube, click here.