It's hard to believe that Schoolhouse Rock is 37 years old. It's even harder, yet wonderful, to believe that some teachers still use the commercial-break length songs to help teach history, math, grammar and science. Now, to comemmorate the release of "Schoolhouse Rock: Earth!" on DVD--the first new batch of songs since 2003's "I'm Gonna Send Your Vote to College," I'd like to share my memories of this fantastic edu-tainment tool.

From the 90s videos and the 30th anniversary DVD:
Everyone's a Schoolhouse Rock headliner.

Originally intended to be an educational phonograph record (the big wax discs that played music with a needle, for you Gen-Y'ers), the idea to turn Schoolhouse Rock into a TV series was bought by ABC for use during the Saturday morning cartoon blocks. It all started with a very catchy ditty: "Three is a Magic Number."

I was only two years old when the original batch of Schoolhouse Rock aired its last new song in 1986, but of what consequence was that to me? Sure, I was learning to read off of 'Wheel of Fortune' and TV Guide, but how could I possibly know the significance of multiplying by nine, or the words to the Preamble?

My first true experience with Schoolhouse Rock came in 1993, when my third grade teacher whipped out her ancient phonograph player (there's that word again!) and played a record called 'Multiplication Rock.' This happened to be the same day we started our daily multiplication mastery test called 'Monsters.' Each morning we'd take a sixty-second test of the tables. We all started on 0s, and each person who scored a perfect grade would start on the 1s the next morning, while the rest tried the 0s again. Each numbered test card had a sticker featuring the little goblins from the Pac-Man video game. So here I was, a kid in the 1990s, taking a test based off multiplication tables we learned from a 1970s television show, featuring stickers from the biggest arcade game of the 1980s. Wow, no wonder I live in the past, I had no idea where the present was!

Bill Cosby's Picture Pages ain't got nothin' on this.

Anyways, later on after we'd finished memorizing the tables, we were approaching the Christmas break, and one day it started snowing. Snow in Texas is always such an event that the state literally shuts down, so it took about five minutes of flurries for my teacher to give up on the idea of us paying attention to her lessons. So she signed out a TV/VCR cart and cued up a Schoolhouse Rock tape. Until that point I had no idea it was actually a TV show; I'd only had experience with the (wait for it) phonograph record. But from word one, I was enthralled. The music was paired up with some really attractive and funny cartoons, and after watching the tape, I had the tunes stuck in my head. Our Scholastic book orders had also come in. I had a really hard time that day choosing whether to watch the tape over again, or read the new Clue book that just came in, or read the copy of 'Ramona and her Father' my grandmother made me get so I could stop checking it out of the public library.
    

This makes me ask if the women in the back were asking for equal voting rights or the ability to have midriffs and wear bold colors like the singer.	Tom Yohe, lead animator and designer, was one of many cast and crew to get their names cameoed in the show.

As the years went on, the music kept playing in my head... "I got six/that's all there is..." "5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30..." "Figure eight/is double four/figure four/is half of eight..." My grandmother, who was (and still is) a substitute teacher at my elementary school, would sometimes get assigned to weeklong assignments covering for the same teacher, and one of those assignments was for my former third grade teacher. I loved the weird privilege of being able to walk around inside classrooms that weren't my own, pry through cabinets and things... and in the case of this one, borrow the entire series of Schoolhouse Rock to take home, watch, then put back the next day.

It was like the addiction had clicked into high gear. I could not score enough Rock. Eventually, ABC started re-running the series along with new songs as part of the "Money Rock" umbrella. The series was re-released onto home video about the same time, and one day at Wal-Mart (now textually Walmart *) I came across the display of them. I had twenty bucks that day, and I'd come in to get a copy of "Jumanji" on VHS. I was faced with a dilemma. Get two Rocks? Get one Rock and Jumanji? I ended up with the latter. I bought Jumanji plus Multiplication Rock--for old time's sake. I got home and watched them both... then I watched Rock about three more times.

Trust me, sales clerks are not that pleased to see people writing checks anymore.

That led to another new method to get my Rocks off.. so to speak. The tape featured a sneak peek of "Electricity, Electricity," performed by the rock band Goodness, as part of the "Schoolhouse Rock Rocks!" CD that had just been released. I eventually did get that CD. And a few years after that, when my VCR was tossed out for a DVD player, it was announced that the entire series would be put on DVD; I pre-ordered from Amazon and waited three months for it to be shipped to me. There are some nights I will still put that DVD on, put the thing on "Spicy mode," to shuffle all the songs, and go to sleep with Rufus Xavier Sarsaparilla, Lucky Seven Sampson, and The Tale of Mr. Morton lulling me to dreamland.

Unrequited love...the basis of many songs about sentence structure.

When I got the news a couple months back that another new set of songs would be made for Earth Day, the cravings and withdrawls suddenly returned, and now I find myself searching my DVD shelves for another taste of good old classic Schoolhouse Rock.

Sometimes addictions are good for you. I never have forgotten how to count by fives, after all.

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