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Health & Fitness

Hug a Terrorist and Damn Darren Stevens

It isn’t really so difficult to understand the reasons for the screwed up human condition Baby Boomers now face. After growing up raised by the “greatest generation,” and morphing into the “free love generation,” we have finally come to a place where all of our belief systems have come back to bite us in the ass.

Make love not war. Really? Did that crap ever work for anyone?

What are we supposed to do? Hug a terrorist?

“Come here, Osama lay one on me and pass me the bong while you’re up?

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Boy, were we naive!

But in our defense I must admit it really wasn’t our fault.

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When you grow up in a generation where kids wear mouse ears, dance, sing and celebrate “anything can happen day” every Wednesday, what the hell do you expect?

Blame William Paley; blame the producers and writers who followed a script headed toward nothing but certain disaster as a blueprint for life.

Case in point Bewitched.

What a crock.

I spent countless hours twitching my nose until people must have thought I had some rare form of facial tic. No one disappeared. I couldn’t conjure up a damn thing and I grew up believing Darren wasn’t a complete jerk for marrying a witch and then spending his life and energy trying to change her into some one else.

Lesson one. Why marriages fail…Samantha and Darren. What a horrible example to set. Should we believe marriage is a place to change someone and force them to succumb to your wishes? Aside from the fact my nose was a great disappointment in more ways than one, the whole “this is what a happy marriage should be” contributed to the enormous divorce rate among baby boomers.

 

Early television was a refection of the times. We were naïve, foolish and under the illusion that all problems could be solved in half an hour, father knew best and Ozzie Nelson could live in an upscale neighborhood and never work a day in his life. Was Ozzie a trust-fund baby?

I had serious issues when I realized my mother didn’t dress for breakfast like Donna Reed in a silk shirtwaist dress and pearls, but was still in her nightgown at four in the afternoon.

It seems the only producer that had a grasp on reality was Rod Serling, so what does that tell us?

To think that Hitchcock would have to go a long way today to top the psychos that inhabit our modern world scares the hell outta me.

When I watch the old television shows on those channels that specialize in nostalgia, I am incredulous over the stupidity of the storylines, the people and the messages they send.

In no way were we prepared for real life.

No wonder Viet Nam was such a horrific wake up call to us.

Real life, killing, war? What the hell? No one in the peanut gallery carried a rifle or smelled napalm in the morning.

It wasn’t until the eighties when Archie Bunker entered the world of television that real life hit like an atomic bomb.

They didn’t sugar coat reality, but by then I fear it was too late.

The insanity of our gossamer existence had already laid the groundwork for sex, love and rock and roll to turn to overdoses, war and what the hell is this thing called real life?

So who or what was it that changed? Or was the stark reality of our existence always lurking under the surface of the “dum de dum” life that existed on fifties television shows?

Violence to us was no more that a pie in the face from Soupy Sales or an Indian attack followed by a “Yo Rinty” to fix the problem.

Lassie always came home and the Lone Ranger always showed up just in the nick of time. Silver bullets were the first major branding campaign. Did anyone besides me feel really sorry for Hamilton Berger?

James Arness cleaned up the town and all families loved each other and no one ever got spanked, beaten or screamed at.

Oh yeah, that was real all right.

We existed in that world, because that was our world. We saw it on television and we believed it because television was some kind of magical place.

Samantha didn’t practice her witchcraft because Darren said so, moms stayed home and dressed impeccably to clean house while sitcom kids came bounding in the door after school to a clean house and warm cookies.

We tried to emulate that existence, I even baked the damn cookies, but it was never the same.

So did that reality exist or did we just wish it could? Or was it on another plane along side our real lives?

Like the story of Cinderella that corrupted every girl’s life and created an insane love for shoes and the belief Prince Charming was out there, would find her and carry her off to his castle until Marvin Mitchelson came along?

It’s so difficult in retrospect to separate the real from the sitcom.

Or was it that we wished an entire world into existence?

The reality of life was easier then, no doubt. No one flew planes into buildings, we didn’t have to compromise our civil liberties to protect our children’s lives and back then Russia was a threat.

Oops, I guess some things really don’t change.

Or is it that we lost the ability to create the life we actually wanted to emulate?

Happy families. Children playing safely in the streets, schools where teachers were respected and kids actually learned. Yes, we all knew moments of that reality, but it all seemed less innocent somehow.

Perhaps it’s our fault we let these things go so easily.

If our childhoods were safer, nicer and more fun, perhaps it’s because we believed them to be. Of course they were in so many ways.

But was it inevitable life, insanity and technology would rob us of our glory days and bring a new set of challenges we never imagined and were ill equipped to battle?

Maybe we still need to clap if we believe in Tinkerbell, believe Lucy finally got into the show and and try to recapture a bit of the peaceful we have lost. If I could twitch my nose and bring back a bit of those less complicated times I would gladly do so for my grandchildren and all grandchildren everywhere.

Hugging the crazies, or a tray full of hash brownies won’t change the world, but perhaps remembering how wonderful the world almost was once, at least on television and a bit in real life, may go a ways toward recapturing those times today.

I hope we can, all except the shirtwaist dresses, they are still so unflattering unless you look like Donna Reed.

I guess in the end watching those old television shows is a reminder of a life now as extinct as a Dodo bird.

Time marches on, plastic surgeons get richer and reruns are still cheap network fare.

Gotta go dust off my mouse ears and watch Spin and Marty. Seriously, would anyone really give Barney Fife a gun?

 

 


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