Jakers!
Lots of little kids are into Elmo (that little red ball of hysteria) or Dora (who the hell is Dora?), but Finn has bucked all the trends and is a huge fan of Jakers! (I added the exclamation point because it’s actually there).
David and I first saw Jakers! on a trip back to my parents’ house, a long, long time ago before we had cable (gasp!). When you’ve just moved from Ireland, a kids’ tv program about an Irish pig now living in America telling stories from his youth on a (fictional) farm called Raloo near a (fictional) town called Tara is sort of exciting. The town looks pretty accurate, the low stone walls look pretty accurate, and they even say Janey Mac. The rolling green hills, even animated, make you think “Why do I live on this patch of dust they call New Mexico?”I don’t remember when we got Finn involved in the family Jakers! obsession, but she’s definitely hooked. Maybe thirty or forty times a day she requests the show in typical Finn-fashion: “WATCH JAKERS!” Watch Jakers, please, I remind her. “WATCH JAKERS! Pease.”
At first watching Jakers! did not involve watching the show itself, just the introduction. She’d get really excited when they turned on their flashlights, and dance when they danced, and then as soon as the actual program started, she’d say “More Jakers?”
Now she actually watches a full half-hour show, which we allow only once a day because we feel like she probably shouldn’t be watching tv at all, but it’s such a quiet half hour… And we’re going to make an exception for airplane travel, when she’s allowed to watch for ten hours as long as she’s not running like a Banshee (get the Irish reference?) up and down the aisles.
Several DVD’s are available, but so far none of them contain our favorite episode, Mind Your Manners. We have “Sheep on the Loose” (DVD) and Piggley’s Colorful World (board book). Finn sleeps with the book in her crib.
Our house is free from Disney characters, Barbie (managed to talk my mother out of Barbie sunglasses, which are not acceptable even if there isn’t a Barbie logo on them), Dora action figures (I still don’t know who she is) and epileptic Elmo dolls, but the songs from the Jakers! have a way of getting into your head. Imagine sealing 550 square feet of concrete floor while singing “Raloo milk will make you moo!”