When I was a kid we used to swim at the public pool every day during the summer. We’d pack up our bike baskets, ride into town and spend the entire day at the pool. The dreaded “adult swim” was the bane of our existence. All the kids were kicked out of the pool so the four adults who weren’t busy chasing their toddlers around the kiddie pool could tuck into their bald caps and butterfly stroke around the perimeter for fifteen minutes. There was even an hour from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. when they dominated the pool. Fortunately, that’s when I went home for dinner.

For the last nine years, [adult swim] has taken on an entirely new meaning. It has nothing to do with the pool, but is more like the revenge of all those kids who sat on the side and watched those four old ladies in their bald caps smirk as they backstroked past us during the dreaded adult swim.

In September 2001, [adult swim] spun off from Cartoon Network’s regular programming, focusing on more “grown up” content.

Wikipedia claims that the majority of [adult swim] programming is geared at teenagers in the 14 to 18 age bracket, but I think we all know better. It was made for the people of my generation, and I dare you to dispute me on that fact.

I was born in the 1970s, and though my 1950s-born mother would argue until her voice gave out that there were good cartoons during her childhood too, the truth as I know it is this: cartoons were advanced to a whole new level during my childhood. Sure, Bugs Bunny, Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop had been around for decades before I came along, and while they definitely shaped the foundation for cartoons to come, the good stuff didn’t come along until the 70s.

The 1970s cartoons shaped and molded the creative cartoonists of today. Seth MacFarlane, for example, was born in 1973, and is one of the more well-known creators of adult-themed cartoon content today. MacFarlane created Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show, two of which appear regularly on [adult swim's] programming roster.

Then there are Seth Green and Matthew Seinrech, the duo responsible for the [adult swim] phenomenon, Robot Chicken. Both Green and Seinrech were born in 1974, reaffirming my theory that the cartoons of my generation’s youth made a monumental impact on the evolution of adult-themed cartoons.

Metalocalypse creator, Brendan Small was born in 1975, and the series embodies so many elements from my own youth during the 1980s, it just continues to prove my theory.

As I continued trolling through content creators for popular [adult swim] cartoons, I found that a large number of the creators were either born in the late 1960s or early-to-mid 1970s.

When I was a kid, you could only watch cartoons on Saturday mornings, or special occasions like holidays. The rest of the week, television was one, big fat adult swim. It’s like the people of my generation grew up saying, “Saturday morning wasn’t enough! We want cartoons all the time!”

As my generation heads into their mid-thirties and early-forties, a new generation will eventually take over, and I can’t help but wonder how the cartoon revolution known as [adult swim] will shape the cartoons of tomorrow. Family Guy is on so many channels, and so regularly, kids who probably shouldn’t be exposed to the themes in the show are growing up under its influence, which will definitely affect the creative content they produce in the next ten to fifteen years.

It’s definitely something to think about, and I for one hope I am around long enough to shake my fist at the cartoons of the future and say crazy old-lady things like, “Back in my day, cartoons were good. This is crap! Crap I tell you!”

[adult swim] stars at 10 p.m. every evening on the Cartoon Network.