Props Boy and the Day I Learnt I am not Cool

   During the 90's in New Zealand, there was a children's television programme called What Now. Technically, it's still going, but I haven't watched it since 2004-ish so as not to spoil my wonderful nostalgic memories. (Also my cousin was talking to me about it about a month ago and told me it has changed considerably from the format I remember.)

   As a kiddie, I loved that show. It had wacky presenters (Caro, Jase, Shavaughn, Props Boy etc) awesome cartoons (I remember it was where I was first introduced to Courage the Cowardly Dog) and a bizarre serial acted by Barbies called Serial Stuff which I loved for some reason.

I always wanted to know what Props Boy looked like with the hat off. Well now I know. Also while researching this, I learnt he's in a fairly mediocre band. Well, I lie. I always thought "Ways to Run" was an alright song.

   Anyway, only some of this is relevant to the traumatic childhood story I'm about to tell you.

   One segment they had on What Now was reading out the super cool letters that kids had sent into them. It was my absolute life goal as a six year old to write them a letter and have it read it out on the show. It would be almost like being New Zealand famous, to my six year old mind at least. So every Sunday morning while watching the show, I'd get out my half-dried up felt pens and my crummy Rose Art Crayons and try to write them a decent letter.

   I wasn't stupid. Well, not entirely. I knew in order to make my letter stand out, it had to have cool things like glitter and colour and stickers. I didn't have any of those and Rose Art was not going to cut it. I decided all I could do was try to draw the presenters of the show and hope my pathetic portrait would at least gain sympathy points. Well, that and some nice "decorations". I decided, in order to show how super cool I was, I'd draw awesome symbols in the margins like stars, hearts, and this really awesome spiral-looking thing I'd seen scrawled in permanent marker on one of the desks at my primary school. My mum looked over my shoulder to see what I was drawing, and immediately snatched up the letter, demanding to know why I was drawing swastikas all over it.

   Six year old me was wonderfully sheltered, and had no idea what a swastika was, or Nazis, or Hitler, or any of that. I just thought it was a cool square-ish spiral- and to be fair, for thousands of years it was, in many cultures, before Nazis adopted it as theirs. Regardless, my mother was well aware that it was not appropriate for children's television, and sat me down and explained to me in excrutiating detail about what the holocaust was.

   That was the last time I ever tried to write to What Now. I wonder if I could send them a letter now, and maybe win some stickers or a tshirt. I don't think they let adults enter though. What a shame.

Bonus: I found a small part of Serial Stuff and none of it makes sense.