A Ginger & Mary Ann for Our Time

One way to help children learn is to relate their lessons to things they understand. So you give them math problems like, “Davey’s waist is 32 inches. He’s wearing jeans with a 36-inch waist. How long should his belt be?” (Answer: Ask General Larry Platt.) Or you ask them to rewrite the Bill of Rights as a hip-hop song. So I’m always on the lookout for modern equivalents of pop culture classics.

I have pointed out before that every young boy should be able to answer the question, “Ginger or Mary Ann?” And the celebrity gossip about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s possible split raises a similar question involving Pitt’s past two love interests:

Angelina or Jennifer?

Angelina Jolie is the exotic, glamorous movie star. Jennifer Aniston is the beautiful, down-to-earth girl next door. The parallels are uncanny. Except, in this case, Mary Ann has been dumped by the Professor in favor of Ginger, and the new couple has adopted approximately 43 of the native children who lived on the island before the shipwreck.

Come to think of it, that plot line would have made Gilligan’s Island a lot more interesting.