There are so many things I we wish we could remember. Examples include the name of the girl you said that stupid thing in front of in sixth grade or why, oh why, in god’s name you decided not to cheat in gym class when everyone else was cutting across the 50-yard line and you were that fat kid that came in last.

Not that either of the above happened.

There is one commercial I’ll never forget, however. For some reason - probably the same marketing genius that had some Indian cry when he saw garbage in a stream (you didn’t care about garbage or Native Americans, you just thought it was funny to see Chief Whatshisname cry) - I cannot get the image of NBC’s ‘One To Grow On’ series of PSAs out of my head.

Scene: Kid, maybe 10 or so, is being egged on by his (obviously younger and obviously non-threatening) friends to do some damn vandalism. Brick-through-a-window or spray-painting-the-principal’s-car-type damage. At his friends’ insistence, he yanks the antenna from a nearby car, causing his friends to make some 80s-style comments of ‘Rad!’ or ‘tubular!’ or ‘you’re cooler than Prince!’

Flash forward to the next morning. The same kid is climbing into the passenger seat of the same car. His father is sitting in the driver’s seat, fiddling with the radio knobs. ‘Hey!’ he exclaims. ‘Some punk broke my antenna!’ The kid slumps down in his seat as the public service announcement outro music plays. ‘The More You Know’ flashes on the screen, making me think the kid would have broken some other sap’s car had he just known the car belonged to his family.

It never seemed that solid a message to me. I could never figure out why some moron kid would break his own father’s car when there were plenty of other parked cars around.

But that skepticism would come serve me well, as apparently NBC has allowed ‘The Office’ to skewer the modern concept of ‘public service announcement’ as cast members teach small children to not eat the black jellybeans (’they’re gross, seriously’) and to eschew expensive bars (’if someone tries to give you a beer for nine dollars, tell them no. It’s just not worth it’).

Watch them for yourself and see how early training in irony has allowed me to appreciate postmodern pop-culture humor.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go vandalize my own apartment. Ironically.