In second grade these two chicks came to my classroom to explain “bad things” to us through little sketches. They’d act out a scene where a kid was offered drugs by an older brother and then they’d demonstrate how to put your foot down and just say no. Every sketch was followed by a round of questions about what we just saw.
After a couple scenes, one of the ladies asked me what my favorite cartoon was. I told her that it was Garfield and Friends, because obviously it was. They set up two chairs next to each other and proceeded to act out a scene in which one woman played a little girl and the other woman played a teenage boy trying to molest her while they were watching Garfield and Friends. It got really uncomfortable and as actors, these women were really flexing their muscles for a bunch of second graders, and at one point I thought they were seriously going to kiss. Adult kiss.
Sometimes I STILL cover my eyes during sex scenes in movies. I don’t know why, I just get uncomfortable. So then imagine me being seven years old and thinking these two ladies playing characters in a very creepy scenario are about to actually kiss in front of me. I totally covered my eyes. Not in a dramatic way, but I think I was probably blushing and maybe squirming a little bit.
After the show, everyone had to sit down and write something about what they learned from it. I was called in to the hall in the middle of writing mine and the ladies asked me why I didn’t want to watch their kissing scene. I told them that I was afraid they were going to like, actually kiss. They proceeded to ask me several questions that now, as an adult I realize were poking at whether I had been in an similar situation or if I was growing up in a homophobic environment. Neither was the case, I was just really affected by their performance/embarrassed.
Wish I could communicate that to them now with my adult words/feelings.
Man, I fuckin’ loved Garfield And Friends.
