Television Tales

Since I was a little girl, television has been an important part of my life. Just like kids these days are growing up with all this technology, when I was growing up, TV was a big deal. It all started with cartoons. I loved the Smurfs when I was a kid. These little blue guys really rocked my world. So did Care Bears and eventually He-Man and She-Ra. I mean I even loved Popeye and Woody Wood Pecker when I was super young. I would ask my parents where Popeye went at night and they would tell me he was sleeping.I would literally get up around six on Saturdays to watch cartoons. I miss loving something that simple so much. It was so simple there was no remote control. I would have to get up to change the channel. Those were the days.Yet, TV would take a little bit of an unhealthy turn when I was around eight years old. My babysitter would watch soap operas on TV in the day and I started paying attention to them. Well, it wasn't long before I was addicted to these adult love stories, like As The World Turns. I had no idea what sex was at this time and I would get embarrassed every time the characters would kiss. But I was hooked into these stories at a very young age.I also started to watch nighttime soaps too, Dallas was my favorite. It was weird my parents were OK with me watching Dallas, a show about promiscuous alcoholic rich people, but would not let me watch The Love Boat or Fame. Fame was my favorite show I would sneak and watch, it was about racy teenagers in the school of the arts. My parents had no idea I was addicted to soap operas, they would have thrown out the TV if they had known what I was watching as a small child.I also loved kid shows like Mork and Mindy. I was even a Star Trek fan at that time. And let's not forget the iconic Brady Bunch. And finally, I loved The Wonder Years. But most of all one of my all time favorite shows was The Facts of Life.I had a babysitter after school who introduced me to MTV when they used to play music videos. It was awesome to watch music videos of Madonna and Michael Jackson. We didn't have cable at home at this time, so it was a treat. When I was around nine or ten, I started to stay home after school alone. I was not allowed to open the door of the house to anyone, including my friends, and I was not allowed to leave the house. My parents were very paranoid that I would be kidnapped or something.So for a time TV was my friend when I came home from school until my parents came home. It was like having someone in the room when no one else was around, it relieved some of my loneliness. This is when I started to watch talk shows. My two favorites, everyone's favorites at the time, were Oprah and Geraldo. I learned what a drag queen was at the age of around eleven or twelve because Geraldo loved to have people on the edge on his show.Oprah taught me about how to get psychological therapy for almost every problem on earth. I remember at a very young age learning about sexual abuse and incest on her show and being a bit traumatized by watching it. I did learn a lot about life by watching these shows and was a little more mature than some of my friends because of it.But I was around twelve years old when I found my most favorite show with my first celebrity crush: 21 Jump Street with Johnny Depp. It was a show about cops that pretended to be in high school to fight crime in schools. I was in love with Johnny. I thought he was the greatest thing since I don't know what. I taped the show every Sunday and watched it over and over all week. I was a nut.Ahh, the eighties and nineties. How I miss television from that period. Shows like Moonlighting and L.A. Law can never be replaced in my eyes. Sitcoms were perfect during this time. Like The Cosby Show and Family Ties. Oh, the memories. I feel like the characters on these shows were people I grew up with. They were my other friends, my fake friends, when I was growing up.Stupid teen shows like Beverly Hills 90210 and Saved By the Bell started to come out when I was a little older, but I liked the adult shows better than these kid shows. Even when I was young I realized that the writing on these shows is what would make or break a show. I remember watching stand-up comedy when we first got cable TV when I was like 13. Wow, I thought comedians were geniuses. How did they write so many great jokes? This is when Ellen Degeneres was just a regular comedian before she was so big and famous.As a young adult I, think I watched every episode of Friends. and E.R. I was also obsessed with Felicity, Ally McBeal, and Lost. In my thirties I was not a huge TV buff, I lost my love and interest in TV around that time. The only show I was really into was Six Feet Under. I mean even though it was a good thing that I was beginning to realize that TV was not as important as the rest of life, I kind of miss that excitement I had about certain shows.The only show recently that excites me is This Is Us. I record it if I can't watch it live. I think it may be the best show on TV. Of course, it's about nothing more than a family. Simple shows like that are what I have always loved. I will admit that very recently I've really liked watching these doctor shows like New Amsterdam and The Good Doctor. Netflix and Amazon Prime have some interesting new shows as well. I love watching some shows on HBO as well.I will also admit that sometimes I turn on the TV and put it on mute and listen to music when I am alone. It makes me feel like there is someone else in the room. Is that weird? People on TV helped raise me. My dad used to call it the Idiot Box. When I'm the idiot that resulted from the box. My dad is blind now and always worried that I would get bad eyesight from watching TV. Thank the gods that I have twenty-twenty vision still.TV Land, like Ninaland, can be great, as long as you don't get lost in it. TV land helped to create Ninaland. TV is an emotional thing for me. It was created a lot of my early thinking in my early days. Perhaps this was not always good for me, but it has created me. TV can be a good thing, just make sure you know hat your kids are watching. You may not want them to turn out like me.nina