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By Donald H. Harrison
 SAN DIEGO—If you don’t believe me, ask someone older than you for corroboration, but there was a time when airlines, banks, gasoline stations and grocery stores valued their customers and did everything they could to make us feel important.
For example, airlines happily gave passengers a free deck of cards to help them pass the hours during the flight. Little passengers received junior pilots’ wings. Sometimes, children were allowed to help flight attendants pass out snacks, which, by the way, didn’t cost extra. Banks were delighted if you would open an account with them, and often offered gifts to induce you to do just that. Among my favorites were the different kinds of piggy banks they’d have for children. Some were shaped like pigs, others looked like famous patriots such as George Washington, and every so often you might even get a mechanical bank that would accept your coin in one slot and fire it into another.
I know it’s hard to believe, but gasoline stations had attendants who would wash your windows, and even check the pressure of your tires while your tank was being filled at a price you could afford. As I recall, they weren’t called “gas stations” in those days; they were called “service stations” – and service was what you got. At grocery stores, you could get green stamps to fill up your redemption books. If memory serves me, you’d get one stamp for every 10-cents worth of purchase. And the premiums you could receive for your green stamps covered an entire range of household and leisure items.
Those were the days when businesses treated their customers like honored guests, when they took to heart the example of the biblical Abraham when he saw visitors approaching his tent on the Plains of Mamre. Abraham did everything he could to make his visitors feel welcome. I had thought that the custom of treating modern-day guests as VIPs had all but passed into the history books, until I was happily disabused of that notion on Thursday afternoon, July 23.
When we took grandson Sky Masori, 2, to the Wiggles Concert at the Civic Theatre, I found that the band members are menschen who extend a number of courtesies to their impressionable pre-school aged fans and to the adults who brought them.
Consider this:
When families came into the Civic Theatre for the 3 p.m or 6 p.m. shows, they were handed a booklet with six learning games. One showed the four Wiggles (Murray Cook , Jeff Fatt, Anthony Field and Sam Moran) dancing with letters of the alphabet placed throughout the picture. Children were invited to find all 26 letters. A second game involved pattern recognition. A Wiggles supporting cast member, Henry the Octopus, saw a starfish, two sea shells, another starfish, one shell and two blank spaces. “Help Henry complete the pattern…” said the instructions.
Yet another game informed that Dorothy the Dinosaur (another regular character) loves ballet. “What other items can you find that that start with the letter ‘B’? There was a doll, a bench, a pitcher and bowl (or basin), bananas, a basket of flowers, baked goods, a bag, a bear and a blanket in a chest.
Wags the Dog (another regular character) was featured in a two-panel game. “Look closely at the two pictures of Wags the Dog” gave the instructions. “Can you spot the ten differences between them?” I found eight without any difficulty, but missed two until I read the answers. The shades of red of Wags’ tongue apparently were different (and I’m apparently color blind), and the colors of his shadow in the two pictures were different. What a wonderful learning game for the tykes!
There were also duplicate images of six Wiggles scenes for a memory match game—the images being such scenes as Dorothy and Wags dancing together; Henry the Octopus waving, Captain Feathersword (the Friendly Pirate) looking
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through his spy glass, the Wiggles playing their instruments; the Wiggles dancing, and the Wiggles riding a surfboard.
Finally there were cut-out flash cards intended to familiarize preschoolers both with images and with tiny facts – or “factlets." A picture of a koala informed that such animals are marsupials," meaning they carry their young in a pouch." A caption with a picture of bananas informed that “monkeys love bananas. Stand up and act like a monkey.”
There were other indications that the Wiggles really care about their fans. Along the side aisles of the Civic Theatre one could find booster chairs to help the l’il ones see the stage. And you know how at most productions you hear an announcement that says something to the effect of ‘Actors Equity prohibits the taking of flash pictures or video recordings?’ The Wiggles waived all that—inviting parents to take as many photographs and videos of their children enjoying the concert as they liked.
People enjoy bringing signs to the Wiggles concerts, and the boys in the band like to point at them and read them aloud. “Anthony Rocks!” said one carried by a family seated near us. There also is a segment when members of the dancing ensemble go into the audience and collect gifts that people have brought for two members of the supporting cast – roses for Dorothy, and bones for Wags.
The Wiggles themselves come into the audience now and again, happily greeting their wide-eyed fans.
“Wide-eyed”-- that is exactly how I’d describe the way grandson Sky watched his first concert-ever, his mouth open in astonishment that those performers he had seen on television (until recently they were on Disney Channel, now they’re on Sprout Channel) actually were live, breathing people and not just flickering images. He sat in his booster chair transfixed by the fast-moving, athletic action on the stage.
Nancy and I remembered that his brother, Shor, 8, who now considers himself too old for the Wiggles, had a nearly identical reaction when he went to his first Wiggles Concert.
Shor, in fact, was the family member who spotted on the Civic Center marquee the announcement that the Wiggles would be coming, just as he and I were leaving a Fiddler on the Roof performance starring Topol. “You should take Sky to that!” enthused the big brother.
By background, Anthony, Murray and Greg (who later was replaced by Sam) were preschool teachers, and Jeff had performed during college days in a band with Anthony called the Cockroaches. In developing their act for preschoolers 20 years ago, the four men probably never dreamed that tthe Wiggles still would be performing two decades later.
The current show, ‘Go Bananas,’ now on tour of the United States, emphasizes gymnastics and acrobatics. To their credit, the four middle-aged school teachers, for the most part, are still fit enough to participate in the demanding stage routines which include cart wheels, handstands, somersaults, and various maneuvers on monkey bars.
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