Something that you might not glean from my appearance, but as you get to know me, I'm sure I'll bring up the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in our conversations mroe than once. I grew up watching Nickelodeon's first version of the show in 2012 after they bought the rights for the franchise. I remember rewatching the show a few years later before in 2018 they created a new show called Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Now that a new movie was released this last summer, I'm excited for all the new content and stories that will be told with these comfort characters of mine.
During my first year of college, I had to write a paper analyzing something about children's storytelling, and I choose a case analysis of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shows including the 1987 show and the show in 2012 and 2018 from Nickelodeon. Specifcally, I looked into the motivations behind making these cartoons in the first place. Did you know that in a majority of the shows, the appearance of new characters was most likely more of a push from executives to make new toys to sell? Furthermore, the 2018 show (Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) was cancelled because toy sales were too low. Perhaps the saddest part of this was this show in particular was the first to push outside of the standard storytelling for TMNT. Rise was the first show to included an African American version of April O'Neil, which is crazy because the character was part African American in the original comics. Furthermore, the show was originally greenlit for a full 3 seasons, but after a "changing of the guard" the show was cancelled in the middle of season 2's productions. I guess what I glean from this is that toys and sales are more important to executives than the actual storytelling and inclusion that is performed by the story creators.Long story short, there are a lot of great things that come from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I'm hoping that as we grow more towards inclusion in our media entertainment, TMNT gets the same treatment and less pressure to make toy sales.
Learning to Swim
Growing up in rural South Dakota, I didn't have a lot of experience in swimming. Sure, I would go to public pools and even had a pool in my backyard for a few summers, but I never was actually taught how to swim. I never put myself in water that was taller than me, nor did I even get in water I couldn't stand in. I stayed away from diving boards, deep areas of water, and natural bodies of water like lakes and rivers. Then, when I graduated high school, I took a trip to North Carolina to visit a friend from high school and her family. During this trip, one of the prime locations on the trip was to visit a beach on the coast. They knew I wasn't a confident swimmer, so my wardrobe to the beach included a very lime green life jacket. After that trip, I told myself "Never Again."The following summer, my little sister and I enrolled in a swim school where we learned the basics of swimming exercises. Let it be said, I learned to swim while a bunch of children 6 years and younger also learned to swim, but I don't regret the decision. Now, I'm a more confident swimmer, and while I still wear life jackets to the beach and on boats, I don't fear getting in water that's taller than me, at least.