There is a television commercial that makes me crazy. It shows a father negotiating breakfast with his young daughter before she goes off to school. He tries to coax her into having eggs, cereal, fruit, any number of items and she sits there with a nasty little pout on her face, shaking her head “no.” Then the ad shows her happily eating a quick tart of some kind. And the dad has one too. And he is so happy because he doesn’t have to argue with her any more. She is clearly in charge.

I can’t wait until he tries to talk her out of taking drugs or alcohol. What will he offer for her pleasure? Will he be able to negotiate with her so that they both end up sharing some substance?

My kids used to play with the children of a neighboring family and they loved to be invited for lunch there.

Because the dialogue went some thing like this:

Would you like soup or a sandwich? A sandwich.

Would you like salami or bologna? Bologna.

Would you like white or whole wheat bread? Whole wheat.

Would you like mustard or mayo? Mustard.

Would you like shiny or dull bologna? What!!!

I accused them of making up the last one but they swore it was true. Then the dialogue went something like this: How some you always just say, “Here’s lunch.” Answer: “Cuz I say so.”

And when they were older and we talked about drugs and alcohol, I told them they couldn’t do it “cuz I said so.”

While I’m in the Andy Rooney mode, another issue that makes me berserk is the focus of most of the commercials for automobile sales. You see people zooming at the speed of light, bad enough, but they are driving on rain-soaked obviously well-populated city streets or doing death-defying hairpin turns on cliff edges. They are going fast and faster. The music is frantic and the engine roar is deafening. Is this how people decide what car to buy?

There is a Volkswagon commercials where a dad drives at about 5 miles an hour while his kid pedals his bicycle on the sidewalk parallel to him, trying to beat him, and does. I would buy a VW just for that commercial.

Then there are weight-loss commercials. They show men and women with sizeable girths and flab in all the wrong places. After a few weeks of taking the product being touted, there photos of them not only svelte, but with rock-hard abs, longer, shinier hair and tans! There is some infinitesimal type at the bottom that apparently explains how this miracle can happen. I would suspect it includes military boot camp and a diet of celery.

Speaking of disclaimers, they usually accompany any pharmaceutical product. A wise, well-modulate voice issues a list of possibilities that could occur should one really need to take this product. They include horrifying side effects such as hair loss, bleeding, oily discharge and even fatality.

What they are saying is you could die from taking this product, but what the heck, it could really clear up that runny nose and sneezing or annoying heartburn.

There’s a couple of beer commercials that, while the law is obeyed in that no one is actually shown drinking, the behavior of the people in the piece indicates they are clearly quite drunk. I thought that was a “no no.”

I must admit that on the whole, I think commercials today are much more clever and even fun to watch _ some make me laugh repeatedly. I usually don’t remember the brand being pushed.