When I Grow Up I Want To Be A Power Ranger

I was talking with Brother Erik on the Facebook last night and he shared this video. Maybe the ultimate Power Ranger battle with characters and colors from many, many incarnations of the team. I remember the time when the Power Rangers first seeped into North America's consciousness. I remember the effect it had on kids at the time. Maybe even more on an impact than Pokémon.

I would do recess and lunchtime supervision just so I could get out of coaching a sport I cared little about. I worked with a different teacher everyday. One was young and was keen to jump in and keep kids from being kids on the playground. She HATED the Power Rangers because she thought it pushed kids to violence.

One day when she was about to break up a group of kids I grabbed her and told her to just watch them for a second. She resisted but did what I asked. Like me she could see that they were not making contact with each other. Like on the show, the REACTION of the people being hit was enough.

The didn't need to make contact to get the high they were looking for from combat. In fact the kids playing 'power ranger' took care to not hit any of their 'enemies'. That would have been 'bad form'. It was fascinating to see that they understood how fake the so called 'violence' of the show was. It was all play acting.

I taught this group P.E. for a half hour twice a week. We only played one game all year because they hated change. I feared them a little but they ran around when I had them so I didn't care to fight them by getting all creative.

My favorite story about this group of six year olds, however, happened at their 'graduation'. As they stepped up to get their diplomas, the teacher would read a little note about each kid, their favorite colors and such and especially what they wanted to be when they grew up.

You would think they would say, 'firefighter' or 'teacher' but TO A KID they all said they wanted to be a POWER RANGER. By kid number eight it was funny to the audience and the teachers because we all knew how hard we had to compete for attention in their lives with this goofy show from Japan over the year. A fight that we had all LOST. God bless 'em. Like my Dad used to say, "You can't fool the kids." The kids always know what is on the cutting edge of cool.

I am sure that amongst one or two of them, as they are grown up now, there is some secret desire to actually grow up and become a POWER RANGER. There are certainly worse things to aspire to.