"Remembering With Elephants" is an episode of the Playhouse Disney animated series Stanley.
Summary[]
Stanley is about to go to the supermarket with his mom, but he can't find one of his sneakers. So to help him remember, he learns about Elephants and discovers that they remember things by retracing their steps.
Plot[]
One morning, Harry, Elsie, and Dennis are all sleeping, when something big and loud starts to wake them up. Harry hides under the bed, thinking it might be an elephant in the room, but it actually turns out to be Stanley pretending to be an elephant with a grey blanket and a slinky toy on his nose. Dennis then reminds Stanley that he's supposed to go with his mom to the supermarket, which Stanley isn't too wild about.
Stanley heads downstairs to the kitchen to get a drink of orange juice. Unfortunately, his brother, Lionel has finished the last of it. His mom then calls him to get ready for the supermarket, but Stanley still doesn't think it'll be exciting. However, he immediately brightens up to it after his mom says they could get some Crumbly Crust Donuts, and instantly heads back to his room to get dressed.
Stanley is almost ready, but only has his left sneaker on and can't find the other right one. He asks his pets if they've seen it, but Harry is still hiding under the bed from the 'elephant' in the room, Elsie is trying to sleep, and Dennis doesn't even wear sneakers (due to fish not having feet). Stanley starts to get upset that he can't remember where it is, since if he doesn't find his sneaker, he can't go to the supermarket, which means no donuts. He then tries to think of an animal that could help him remember, which reminds him of the old saying: 'an elephant never forgets'. To find out if the saying is true, Stanley decides to look up elephants in the Great Big Book of Everything.
Stanley begins to look it up under the letter L, but then remembers that the word actually starts with an E before the L. Stanley and Dennis go into the book and find out that elephants grow up to 13 feet tall (about 4 times Stanley's height) and can weigh as 6 tons/12,000 pounds. They also drink up to 13 gallons of water a day and eat up to 300 pounds of trees daily. Remembering the saying about elephants never forgetting, Stanley and Dennis discover that the saying comes from how the female elephants always remember to retrace their steps when they migrate.
Stanley brings the female elephant out of the book into his room, but it ends up frightening Elsie and squashing Harry against the wall. Realizing that plan didn't work, Stanley then gets an idea to retrace his steps to find his sneaker, just the same as elephants do. But before he can, he sends the elephant back into the book where she belongs.
Once the elephant is gone, Stanley tries to think of where his sneaker may be. He remembered having both of them on until he went to bed. Dennis reminds him that he kicked one of them off with his foot, but he didn't do it with the other one. Instead, he took it off with his hands and threw it somewhere. After realizing that, Stanley suddenly remembered where it was: the closet. Stanley then finds his sneaker in the closet and puts it on just as his mom calls.
Stanley heads downstairs, but his mom can't find her car keys. Stanley tells her to try retracing her steps to help her remember. She remembers that she had them the other day when she wore her red coat and finds them in the coat pocket. With her keys and his sneaker found, she and Stanley are now able to go to the supermarket and get some donuts.
Cast[]
- Rene Mujica as Harry
- Ari Myers as Mom
- Shawn Pyfrom as Lionel
- Charles Shaughnessy as Dennis
- Jessica D. Stone as Stanley
- Hynden Walch as Elsie
Trivia[]
- Moral: Everybody forgets things sometimes. But when you do, it helps to retrace your steps.
- The episode is also adapted into a picture book titled An Elephant Never Forgets.
Errors[]
- Throughout the episode, Stanley is shown to be wearing only one sneaker, but when Dennis describes how tall an elephant is, he appears to be wearing both sneakers.
- When the elephant matriarch comes out of the book, in the top right corner of the background, there’s a small bit of writing that reads ‘End’.