Cartoons: Why I Loved Saturdays

There are a lot of reasons that most kids love Saturdays. Kids love Saturdays because it means they do not have to get up early and go to school. Kids love Saturdays because they usually get to relax or play with friends. Kids love Saturdays because it means they got to stay up late on Friday night. But as a kid I loved Saturdays for a totally different reason: Saturday morning cartoons.
One of the highlights of my childhood was watching Saturday morning cartoons. My siblings and I looked forward to it all week long. We made it through five long days of school, homework, going to bed early, and eating healthy breakfast foods in order to get to the next Saturday. And though the wait for Saturday felt like forever, eventually it always came. And with it came our special Saturday routine. Although Saturday is the perfect day to sleep in, we usually got up just as early as we would for school, and we did not even need alarm clocks! Whoever woke up first would run to wake up all the others and together we would go quickly to the family room and turn on the television and flip to our favorite channel: the one with the best Saturday morning cartoons.
Oh, we loved our cartoons. We kept track of what was happening in all our favorite cartoons and we waiting with anticipation for the next episode. We were glued to the television with eyes so huge we did not miss a thing. We would laugh outloud, talk to our favorite cartoon characters outloud, and get mad at the television outloud anytime the cartoons did not go like we thought they should. We were so into our favorite cartoons that only one thing could pull us away from the tube. Dad's pancakes.
Dad's special, Saturday-only pancakes were amazing. We could eat as many as we wanted and we could put anything in them we wanted: blueberries, chocolate chips or even M&M's. We looked forward to our Dad's pancakes almost as much as we looked forward to watching our favorite cartoons. Our parents even started letting us eat our pancakes in front of the television so we would not have to miss a cartoon! What a deal! Saturday was the only day the good cartoons were on, it was the only day that Dad made his signature, unhealthy pancakes, and it was definitely the only day we could eat in front of the television in the family room.
So while I liked not having to go to school on Saturdays and I liked being able to play with friends and stay up later, the real reason I loved Saturdays was not even my Dad's great pancakes. The real reason, the biggest reason that I grew up loving Saturdays was simple: Saturday morning cartoons.