When I was a kid, watching afterschool TV with my sisters, we had an unwritten competition surrounding some of those classic TV shows. I am talking about the Brady Bunch or Gilligan’s Island or possibly My Three Sons. These shows were on every day of my childhood for several years. We must have gone through the entire loop of them a few times. Since we knew them quite well, we competed with each other by spouting out the central premise of the episode as quickly as possible. We would say things like “This is the one where Bobby shoots pool.” or “The one where they break the vase.” (the Brady Bunch) For Gilligan’s Island, we could say “The Russian Astronauts!” or “The attaché case!” These utterances were good enough.
With these shows, we didn’t even need for the characters to speak. For my sister, just seeing what Jan or Marcia was wearing was enough. I can’t say as I won many of these contests, but I wasn’t far behind.
With some free time this afternoon, I lazily turned on the TV to see that an episode of Happy Days was starting up. It seems a local TV station is airing a lot of old TV programs including Hogan’s Heroes (a favourite of mine), the original One Day at a Time, Cheers, and Happy Days among others.
With one look at the opening scene, I muttered to myself that “This is the one where Arnold’s burns down.” And it unfolded just like I remembered it. Before the fire Chachi finally got a “maybe” from Joanie. This would lead to the ill-fated Joanie Loves Chachi— I should stop now before my reminiscing gets to be too much.
While I could spend these paragraphs lamenting how much my brain is clogged up with useless trivia knowledge of TV shows and can no longer factor a quadratic equation, instead I am choosing to celebrate it. Yes, I have watched a lot of TV. Yes, a lot of old sitcoms seem to take up a lot of room in my head. That doesn’t alter the fact that my memory for this stuff is still good. So, Today’s Perfect Moment is realizing that I still have that childhood skill. Now, either I am going to have to audition for Jeopardy or challenge my sisters to a game of Scene it.
An Archive of Perfect Moments 