Raised by Television

I texted an old friend this morning and I realized was truly raised by television. (This is also because my mother was either drunk or working, and my step-father was on drugs and selling them, so television took up the slack!) I can still sing the theme songs from The Love Boat (Love, exciting and new, come aboard, we’re expecting you) and Flipper (They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightening, no one you see is smarter than he).

My Saturday evenings were Love Boat and Fantasy Island. My Saturday mornings were re-runs: Shirley Temple movies, Abbot and Costello, The Three Stooges, Little Rascals, Godzilla movies, Looney Tunes. My after school baby sitters were Match Game, Hogan’s Heros, Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, the Brady Bunch, the Partridge Family, the Monkees, I Dream Of Genie, Bewitched, Batman, Green Acres, Star Trek….and I can’t say that I was unhappy with TV as my copilot. I still have a good relationship with these shows, and for whatever it’s worth, they mostly had decent values in them: be kind to your partner, the prime directive, bad guys will ultimately fail (or you hope they will).

So Foro and I are in for an evening with re-runs, I think. I’m looking forward to it!