We've all been there. You wake up early on a saturday morning. The sun is shining through your window and you smile, remembering that there's no school. You throw back the covers and run downstairs to get a bowl of cereal and plop down in front of the tv for the first show of the day. With bright eyes and itchy pajamas, you watch intently, from the first cartoon to the last live-action silliness. Hooray for childhood.

These were the things that gave us joy. Watching Baby Kermit open the closet door, only to find a locomotive screaming towards him. Waiting for Pee-Wee to reveal the day's secret word. Finding out what activity Garfield was going to blow off for a plate of lasagna. We've all been there. And we'd all love to be back there.

At some point in our lives, someone told us that it's time to grow up. That we had to leave the childish things behind and face the real world. We're too old to watch Nickelodeon. We have responsibilities now, no time for dreaming. "Put your toys away, those are for kids." Well, I say, "No." And amazingly, so has my generation. Truly, we are the first to take it with us, to follow the mantra of Toys R Us: I don't wanna grow up.

Just look at the world today. The video game industry is one of the biggest in the nation, virtually untouched by the woes of the failing economy. The Cartoon Network has gone from a Looney Toons graveyard to a thriving nexus of animation innovation. And we, the new adults, are having more fun than our predecessors ever dreamed.

And what are the children of today watching? What gems are they taking away from their saturday mornings? A lot of adults today will look at the cartoons of the 21st century and think that they're not as good as the ones from the before times, but you know what? That's not for us to judge. I'm sure my grandparents didn't understand why I was so enthralled by Pee-Wee's Playhouse, and rightly so. It wasn't for them. It was for me.

My nephew recently told me that he's a Power Ranger. Part of me got upset. He doesn't know anything about the Green Ranger Saga. He doesn't know the relationship between villains Rita Repulsa and Lord Zedd. He probably doesn't even know what a Zord is. Do they even still have Zords? I haven't watched the show in a long time, mostly because it barely resembles the show I was used to. But it doesn't matter. He's still a Power Ranger. We've all been there.

These shows are with us forever. They are part of our lexicon and will always shine through. Every time we see a child wearing footy-pajamas or eating a bowl of Fruit Loops, we'll be transported back to a time when we were undeniably happy.

We've all been there. We will always be there.