Bazooka Joe, Chesterton and Godly Virtues!

I made an impulse purchase on my way through the checkout the other day.  Now this is something I  never do, but the pack of Bazooka gum was calling me.  I haven't had a piece of Bazooka in several years.

Although I was disappointed that it was not wrapped exactly the way it was in the late sixties, I was pleasantly surprised that it still contained the Bazooka Joe (and his gang) comic strip.  I was even more surprised that it gave me a code for a webpage (for kids) with games and videos.  It did include my fortune, also, that warned me that "someone close to me is jealous," so there's that.

Anyway, after doing a little research on Wikipedia (maybe you already know this?), I learned that "The gum was probably named after the rocket-propelled weapon developed by the U.S. army [in World War II] which itself was named after a musical instrument."

Interesting.

Anyway, the sugary part of the gum lasted about as long as it always had and provided a few short-lasting bubbles, so that was fine.

I think there's something nice about a company finding a way to progress--like with the webpage--and keeping innocent fun for the kids, like the comic strip.

Innocence seems to have fallen by the wayside in our current climate, which is really too bad.  I was reading an article on catholicculture.org recently where the author (Donald DeMarco, PhD) made a connection between innocence and humility in a discussion on *Chesterton:

"Chesterton would not have possessed the virtue of innocence had he not also possessed the virtue of humility. Innocence protects us from the poison from without; humility protects us from the poison from within. Pride, our most toxic inner poison, causes our vision of ourselves and reality to be blurred, primarily because it leads us to take ourselves too seriously and reality not seriously enough."

These are good things to think about--innocence and humility--and perhaps if they are on our radar as something to strive for, we too, might find in them, as DeMarco says, "liberating freedom," as they "are not virtues of the secular world, but virtues of the child of
God . . ." 

Janet Cassidy
janetcassidy.blogspot.com
jmctm2@gmail.com

*G. K. Chesterton, English writer, convert to Catholicism