Here's how old I am: when I was in grade school, National Geographic was not a Rupert Murdoch organ, or even a marginal basic cable channel. It was a scientific journal that produced a handful of nature specials over several years for PBS, and those shows were such a big deal that you didn't get assigned homework the day they aired, you just had to watch the TV show. Everybody watched, and you could stay up past your bedtime on a school night if you bathed early and were in your pajamas. They were THE BEST.
I should be able to say I remember many, but I only remember one: The Wild Dogs of Borneo, because this was when my father showed his children what life was all about.
It's hard to imagine in these enlightened times, but in the early 70s, unless a child had chosen her hamsters poorly, she was probably unacquainted with maternal cannibalism. As our rodents were onlies, my sister, brother, and I were completely unprepared for what happens to the little wild puppies in a drought when the food situation is bleak.
As the rich voice of the narrator described the plight of the mother, the resource burden the puppies represented, and the survival instinct, we put two and two together. There was some yelling and crying as we decided to get as far away from the television as we could, but Dad grabbed us all and sat us in his lap, squeezing us in place.
"No! You kids need to watch this. THIS is how the world works. Everything dies. Nature doesn't care. You can't escape, even if you pretend it's not true!"
My mother dragged on her cigarette (my father felt so strongly about this teachable moment that he had dropped his in an ashtray), and protested that this was a little much for children. She and my father rarely disagreed; but she knew who was going to have to put us to bed, so she was clear about who the real victim was going to be.
We squirmed and cried while the mother ate the puppies. If things looked up in Borneo for the dogs after that, I don’t remember. But my father never wavered from that message, and that internalized chaotic brutality has been oddly one of the best things he ever gave me. That, and letting me stay up for Monty Python’s Flying Circus.