i began watching justice league unlimited on youtube this week. like many of my generation, i watched the original batman the animated series, and to this day will fight tooth and nail that mark hamill's voice of the joker is the best rendition of the character ever captured. this new justice league show, the latest and apparently final chapter in the paul dini/bruce timm collaboration that started it all, is quite good too. the voice talent is surprisingly diverse, from justin bateman to ed asner to michael york to nathan fillion. but that's not the point. i raise this point, looking over my collection of childhood memories on dvd (freakazoid, gummi bears, batman the animated series, king arthur and the knights of justice, etc), and remembering something a friend of mine once told me, when she was taking a psych class for her doctorate at tufts:

most people who possess child like features after the final stage of normal emotional maturity usually revert to childhood possessions as a manner of repression of current trauma. they latch on to things they associate with a simpler period of existence to convince the conscious and the subconscious that there is no problem.

anyone who knows me acknowledges, with various terminology ranging from blunt to adroit, that i am childish. i have a predisposition to immature and occasionally rash decision making, can become upset over inconsequential things, and when threatened have all the grace and tact of a seven year old. however, this made me wonder if my love of the things that defined my childhood are simply because i don't want to face the conventional face of adulthood. i wonder because i like some adult things. i like black socks. i like bargains in gas prices. i love alcohol and tobacco.

unsure if grammi gummi is just a security blanket or is really something more,
RM