Sometimes I want to be a PBS kid again

April 17, 2012 1:24 PM

Hivemind, please help me find a PBS commercial that stuck in my impressionable kid brain! This would have been mid-1990s, probably on WGBH Boston and likely right before or after Bill Nye. My Google/Youtube-fu is failing me.

This was one of those short 30-second PBS promos between shows. Three kids are sitting outdoors at night/early evening. They're doing a "when I grow up" routine that went something like this:

Boy 1: "When I grow up I wanna be a movie star."
Boy 2: "I'm going to be a pro quarterback."
Girl 1: "I want to be a computational fluid dynamics engineer."
[girl gets up and runs down the hill]
Boys: "Hey, wait up!"
[PBS logo, tagline I forget]

For some reason this little vignette has stuck in my head for nearly twenty years, and I'd love to find the clip, if it exists. There are tantalizing bits and pieces online, enough to reassure me I'm not making this up, but I can't find a clip.

posted by Wretch729 to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Hmm. Something similar to your recollection appears at the very end of chapter 8, here. Looks like an audio version appeared at the end of a "Fresh Air" interview (Dec. 4, 1997) with Bill Nye.
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:51 PM on April 17, 2012

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, CHILDREN DISCUSSING CAREER PLANS)

CHILD: “A movie star.”
CHILD: “A pro quarterback.”
CHILD: “I want to be a computational fluid dynamics engineer.”
posted by MonkeyToes at 1:52 PM on April 17, 2012

I definitely remember this too and exactly as you describe it. Also likely aired in proximity to Bill Nye. I have no idea how to find it though.
posted by cmoj at 4:25 PM on April 17, 2012

Mod note: Final update from the OP:

Wonderful mefite betafilter finally found this for me in an AskMe
thread where I mentioned it. This clip had sat in my brain for so
long, so glad to have finally found the video.

posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 3:13 PM on September 10, 2015