Boots Are Made For Walkin'

With the weather warmer, I find it easy to construct entire days where we don't watch any TV (except for Jeopardy!, of course) - no Barney, Blue's Clues, Max and Ruby, or Little Bear. Those are now pretty much rainy day or grumpy Mommy activities. But just yesterday, with the high humidity and a few sprinkles (how was I to know the mess I was about to start driving in?) I ended up watching another action-packed adventure with Dora the Explorer and her sidekick Boots.

Now, understand, I actually like Dora. She's not your classically big blue-eyed, blonde silly cartoon princess (or lycra covered one - let's just not even go there, shall we, Irish?). She's a big brown-eyed, glossy brown-haired adventure seeker - I like the episode where she saves the Prince from the tower in which a wicked witch has imprisoned him. It's this very episode, however, that started me noticing that something is not quite right with the little sidekick monkey, Boots. For one thing, why did they need to build 12 little steps up to the platform outside the Prince's door when Boots very easily could have jumped - heck, a Lemur could have done about twice the height and distance. And why is it that Boots can scamper up a disastrously punctured hot air balloon to tape the hole shut before certain and heinous death in a crocodile filled lake, but he can't climb the tree where the last piece of chocolate is hanging from the lowest branch?

Come on, people! Surely the 'gentrification' of Boots has rendered him impotent in his simian ways. Force an ill-fitting pair of red boots on a monkey in the name of progress and civilization, and you get a monkey who can't climb trees and has yet to be seen eating a banana.

Personally, I'm waiting for the episode where Swiper swipes Boots' lovely red Boots Of Incredibly Preposterous Girth, flings them into the valley where too many red boot-shaped things reside and frees Boots from his servitude to Dora. I, especially, can't wait to see Dora say "Oh, Boots, give me your hand and we'll cross the Rickety Bridge of Doom" and Boots turns on her with a primate's venom and sneers, "Take your hands off me, you filty human."