I Just Want A Hippopotamus

Our lives are all about making connections. I'm not talking about connections with family, friends, or other people. I'm referring to the connections which teachers are always hoping children can make. The ones when they learn something new...connections between facts, or songs, or news, or family traditions for example. I'm talking about the connections that  make ideas come together and sometimes make us say, "aha", or "oh yeah, I remember that", or "now it all makes sense".

So I started to wonder. If we hear something frequently, does it sit in the back of our brain somehow as if it were important or special? Is it lingering there, waiting to break out some day?  Is there some kind of subconscious or subliminal connection?

When I was very young, I remember hearing a song called, "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas". It didn't mean much to me, or so I thought. I just remember hearing it...a lot.  In the 80's, Anne Murray sang about a hippo in her bathtub. I know this because my toddler children wanted to hear the cassette tape ad infinitum.
                                                                     
In the late 90's, there was a Canadian tv commercial about house hippos. The commercial was aimed at children, attempting to get them to use critical thinking skills to ask questions about what they were watching on tv.  Apparently, children started to believe that house hippos were an actual real thing.

Similar commercials reappeared in 2019, created by the Canadian non profit literary organization MediaSmarts. It was part of a public service "break the fake" campaign produced by an Ottawa firm HyperActive (I got this from Wikipedia). The video was more explicit in reminding children that they shouldn't believe everything they see on tv. There were accompanying lesson plans for teachers who opted to use this as a teaching tool.

“Many Canadians remember the little hippos fondly, so we thought they were the perfect reminder that just because we want something to be true, doesn’t mean we should believe it,” said Kathryn Ann Hill, Executive Director at MediaSmarts.

I couldn't help but wonder, "Why a hippo?"

Why was the hippo the symbol that the media company decided to use for the commercials? In my mind, I had a vision of advertisers who were somehow influenced by either hippos in their bathtub, or wanting a hippopotamus for Christmas.

More recently, I've seen frequent mentions of house hippos on Facebook. People have been excitedly posting, "I found one," and sharing its obscure location. Whether they're planters or ornaments,  hippos in Canadian homes are starting to replace the age old Norwegian kitchen witch it seems. And why not? They're purely Canadian and they are real after all aren't they?

I think, "I want a hippopotamus for Christmas". Perhaps I'll find one during my eventual post pandemic excursions. There seems to be a certain joy in locating them hiding away in gift shops and thrift stores. Maybe I'll discover one that speaks to me.

Meanwhile, I have to wonder what creativity will eventually come out of the current "Baby Shark" generation.

UPDATE

Found one. Like me, he is slightly flawed, rough around the edges,  has been chipped away at, but is not totally worn out. His colouring has become bland, but there are still occasional artsy signs of creativity, and perhaps of a once quite different and busy life. He has short little legs, is a little hefty in the mid section, and enjoys decorating himself for the occasional nightly outing. He becomes more easily tired, continues to be frequently distracted, but still manages to do a lot more than many other hippos his age. In fact, he has even travelled a distance from a scratch and dent rack, just to live at this house. He enjoys fun, and smiling, and is hoping to be around for awhile to add to his lifetime of adventures.