Kelly and Quang's Global Roam

My brother and I used to get up early on Saturday mornings and watch cartoons. One of our favorite shows was called Big Blue Marble. The show was about kids living in different parts of the world. It also had a globe mascot that used to dance around at the end of the show and tell viewers to send in their names and addresses and they would get paired with a pen pal. My brother and I were so taken with the idea that we sent in our names more than once.

I had two pen pals - one from New Jersey and one from Zimbabwe. I remember getting letters from the girl in Zimbabwe. It was so exciting to look at the globe and think about how far that letter had come. I don't remember anything about her - not even her name - just simply than I was totally enchanted with the idea of Zimbabwe. We didn't communicate for very long. Only four or five letters were exchanged. Nonetheless, it put her country on my radar.

My other pen pal was named Lauren. She was from New Jersey. We wrote letters for years, exchanged school photos and even met. She came to stay with my family for a week one summer. I'd just finished 9th grade. At that point, we'd been writing to each other for five years. We've met several times since then. Now we send emails.

I think about the Big Blue Marble from time to time. I wonder if this childhood show is at all responsible for my adult wanderlust. Whenever I think about the pen pal aspect of the show, I am astonished. What parent in their right mind these days would let their child send a postcard to a TV show with their complete name and street address written on it? I guess the late 70s and early 80s were a simpler time.

For some reason, the Big Blue Marble was back in the forefront of my mind this weekend. I googled the phrase and actually found a YouTube video of the opening song, the dancing globe and the end credits. Now I know for sure that the late 70s and early 80s were a simpler time. The opening song is really quite dorky and would hardly fly with today's kids. But stick it out and you can see the dancing globe that put me in contact with the world.