My wonderful husband hooked up XM radio in my vintage Toyota 4-Runner. (When did 2004 become vintage, you ask? When it didn't include an XM radio or a built-in video player in the back seat!) With this, I've migrated toward music from my high school and college days bringing back a flood of comparisons of then, versus now. (Of course I listen to NPR and Spanish radio as well, hoping that if I absorb enough I'll be more worldly AND speak intelligently in Spanish to boot!)
Technology of Old...
Television - Growing up in the Detroit area we had then benefit of a 4th television station, bringing our running tally of available TV channels to 4 1/2. It's a wonder we survived! CBS, NBC, ABC, TV 50 (Fox, I think) and 1/2 of a Canadian channel that you could get some of the time if you hung the aluminum foil just right on the bunny ears. No one under the age of 30 understands what I just said - but the rest of you are laughing!
We were allowed 1 hour of television per day (although we totally cheated and snuck in a good 1/2 to 1 hour after school.) The TV was in the basement, eliminating ANY chance of watching while eating dinner and the TV cart had casters which enabled it to dual-task between keeping the TV upright and serving as a race car careening around the basement until my mother yelled for us to stop from upstairs.
Prime Time Television...
Bed time was a strict 9 o-clock during school days. Television required minimal adult supervision, back in the day, as the most risky show on was Charlie's Angels and Magnum PI. We were allowed to watch Magnum in our house (Tom Selleck still looks amazing!) but never Charlie's Angel's. Hmmmm.
Sunday night - Wonderful World of Disney. Who didn't hate the way they left us hanging with the two parters!
Monday night - Little House on the Prairie (I am named after Laura Ingalls, you know!)
Tuesday night - Father Murphy
Thursday night - The Walton's - Good night, John Boy!
Saturday night - BONUS! Love Boat / Fantasy Island! Da Plane! Da Plane!
Seriously - even Gopher on the Love Boat didn't get in to much trouble - and he was always bumbling around!
Saturday night was popcorn night with TV - (and for you youngsters reading this, popcorn was made with corn kernels and oil back in the day - no microwaves!)
TV back then was a transport vehicle - taking us to strange and amazing places we never dreamed of going and dragging us in to stories that sparked imagination and introduced us to people who inspired us.
We watched the world unfold with fallen presidents, lunar landings, speeches and assassinations of famous people of our time - all with a touch of mystery and distance - because the world was further away back then and we had just a tiny window to anything beyond our school and neighborhood. Things that happened in this tiny box could never happen to us in reality - the danger was too far away, and not real.
So, in closing - my Top 15 favorite TV shows of my childhood (in random order) - let's see who responds either in comments on via Facebook to remind all of us 40 and over of others I've forgotten...
- Magnum PI
- MacGyver
- Wonderful World of Disney
- The Thorn Birds (mini series)
- Dark Shadows
- Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom
- 21 Jump Street
- Baywatch
- Bosom Buddies
- The Brady Bunch
- Greatest American Hero
- Quantum Leap
- Dallas
- Murder She Wrote (I'm a sucker for a good mystery!)
- Family Ties
I hope that my daughter still finds magic in television - because it is still there - you just have to look a bit! The world feels a bit closer these days, and I don't know if that's because it is - or because I'm a mom, and my spidey sense works 24x7, 365 days a year. Mama Bear will keep the world at bay for a bit yet, don't worry little one.
Koko Puff - who lays at my feet under the table as I write this blog - adopted our family on a cold November in 2003.
I remember looking out of the back window of our home and seeing a small, black dog running about in the open area between our home and the marina below. A few hours later this little dog was still running about in the cold, and rain and she looked a bit like our neighbors dog, so I went out to capture her and bring her home.
Koko came to us with a collar, no tags and a bit of baggage. After capturing her and carrying her back up the hill to our home (7 months preggers and all) we realized that Koko was NOT the neighbors dog, and was a puppy(ish) in fact. She immediately loved our dog Kahlua, and demanded to be loved and have her tummy rubbed. While we tried to find her owners (putting ads in the local paper and fliers up at the local pet stores), no one ever called about Koko. She found a temporary home for a weekend, but was returned shortly thereafter to stay forever after ripping apart a pillow. (SHE'S A PUPPY! HELLO!) We've always had a soft spot for the underdog, and if ever there was one, Koko was it. Whoever her previous owners had been, someone had beaten this dog, resulting in submissive peeing - and lots of it!
Two months after Koko arrived, our daughter Katrina entered the world. I worked this dog hard during my maternity leave - building her confidence in herself, and her trust in us. I couldn't do much about the submissive peeing - but it seemed to lessen over time. She always seemed to be on the edge - thinking that "today" might be the day that we took her to the pound, or worse. Loving Koko was both easy, and hard.
Fast forward eight years. We still have Koko, and we love her immensely. She is an outstanding dog - very observant, kind, aware and intuitive. She knows instinctively when someone is sad, someone is hurting, or a pet is hanging on by a thread, and Koko stands by them, ever loyal, providing comfort.
She is also nuts. She is still convinced that if ANYONE is in trouble, she is also in trouble. That "today is the day" that we're shipping her off to the farm, or wherever dogs go. She loves Kahlua, Katrina and our family with all of her big lab-mix heart. She is a good girl - but she is nuts.
Classic Koko:
- Glazed eyes, usually laying on her back, or poised for immediate "raking" - front paws out and "raking" your upper body as her brain short circuits.
- Spaz girl - cycling around, and around, and around. Occasionally getting you from behind and knocking your feet from underneath you.
- Crazed Girl - doesn't know what quite to do, so she jumps through the car from the front to the middle to the back - repeat. Often taking out cups of coffee, breakfast food, etc.
- Sweet Girl - intuitively knowing that you are sad or having a bad day and snugging her little nose into your lap, looking up at you with her deep eyes and making everything just a bit better.
Koko is your best girl friend. The one that you call when your boyfriend breaks up with you. Always there through thick or thin. She is also the wall-flower that many of us were in middle and high school - sticking close to the wall so that she won't be noticed, but always just behind you if you need her. She celebrates every day that isn't "the day" and we are so glad that we kept her.
Coming next - Willow - the unexpected addition that created "The Pack."
My sister's youngest daughter recently bit it doing some child-typical activity, putting her teeth through her bottom lip and receiving a 5-stitch trophy as a result. Poor little thing - not even 2 yet, and already she has her first scar!
Her little accident triggered my own memories of childhood and all of the little (and not so little) accidents that occurred, could have occurred, or never occurred and yet, we all still survived!
My brother Peter was the king of "accidents" in our family. Okay, I pushed him on the hopity-hop that Christmas night, causing him to careen forward into the corner of the wall, resulting in a run to the hospital that night. THAT was totally my fault - but there were plenty of others!
"Don't run in the house!" Of course we did, and Peter ran through the back screen door, breaking the glass at the bottom with his knee, resulting in a run to the hospital.
"Don't play on the roof!" Of course, he did, and fell off, ripping the wart from somewhere on his leg clean out. No hospital run there!
"Don't play with the cigarette lighter in the car!" Of course I believed Peter when he told me that it didn't get hot when the car wasn't on, resulting in almost losing my thumbprint and hiding what we had done from my mother!
"Don't play on the boat!" My mother's old National sailboat parked on its trailer in the back yard. Of COURSE we ran the length of it, back and forth, almost cutting the dog in half numerous times as the rudder went up and down with each length!
"Laura Susan - Get That Piano Ready!" My biggest, by far, was an unfortunate piano accident in 8th grade when I was accompanying my mother's elementary class for an entire student body assembly. The piano was facing the wrong way on stage, and I attempted to move it myself, giving the old upright a good shove at the top and sending it flat over on it's back in front of everyone. To add insult to injury, the maintenance guys righted it and I still had to play it. (It didn't sound so good. Piano's aren't meant to do that!)
The point is this - we didn't have car seats, we barely had seat belts, we ran wild all summer and after school and almost killed each other on numerous occasions, but never actually succeeded! We didn't have child safety caps (although they would have been a good idea when I found the orange flavored Bayer's Children's Aspirin and consumed the entire bottle!) At the tender age of 13 I was allowed to move a piano, for goodness sake!
Even with all of today's safety precautions, my own daughter has managed to cut her chin open falling off of a stool in the kitchen, stab almost through a toe with the grill cleaner-offer-scraper-thing, consume a wood-chip from the playground at latch-key, fall from the top of the slide, be knocked off of the dock my over zealous dogs time and time again, lose toe nails and much more than I'm certain I don't know about or have blocked for my own mental well being.
Stitches, boo-boos and band-aids are a rite of passage from childhood to adult. Maybe with the faster pace of the world today versus the world of old we are better off without all of the car seats, air bags, etc. - but still - aren't these some of the stories that we share and laugh about around the bonfire and dinner table when we get back together with friends and family? I hope so - because they are MUCH funnier the second or third time around!
Abby Jane - here's some options for you to consider when you get a bit older and need to tell your first boo-boo story...
- Fight on the playground - and you beat the 2nd grader fair and square!
- Rockem-Sockem Robots match, and you lost - but he took a good beating!
- Blindsided by a run-away kick-ball!
- Roller Derby accident.
Hopefully some of these make your future dinner table / camp fire stories!
