When we were young, anyone older than us was a grown- up. Babies were younger & adults were older. Siblings were a jumble of ages pending the years, but still under the jurisdiction of grown-ups. I think we mostly counted two things for the right perspective: the candles on a birthday cake & the class you were in. Numbers put everyone in their place. It made life simple.
Then came the age of ‘age propriety’. You should be doing this for this age. This is the way a grown-up behaves. ‘This is your goal’ was written between the lines. Fortunately we had a much broader spectrum of role models to follow than the previous generations. That’s right, we were not limited to our parents, neighbors, teachers & parishioners …we had TV families to set the right examples for us. Oh the good fortune of watching Ward & June, Ozzie & Harriet and of course Lucy & Desi to set us straight. It probably didn’t always agree with our parents though. ‘How come Beaver got away with it and I didn’t’. (You got caught!) ‘Lil’ Ricky got bongos & Wally got to go to the dance’. (You got grounded!) Our grandparents didn’t have to deal with this when our parents were growing up. (No TV!) Things were simpler then.
A bit of a twist was added... the macabre of ‘The Adams Family’ and later ‘All in the Family’. New plots & twists were added to the traditional family values. We were slightly older by then & in the ‘age of questioning’ as Mike & Gloria were doing. We were leaving high school, getting jobs, going to college, getting married & doing all the grown-up stuff we were prepared for at an earlier age….but with a twist. This twist was ‘our way’. Time to explore doing things while breaking a few rules of the establishment. Just in case we still needed help, there were a number of new characters added to the TV line-up to help us along. Many were from TV spin-offs from ‘All in the Family’: Maude, The Jeffersons & Good Times.
Our mile-marker in family living came with ‘The Cosby show’. Some of us were parents by then and it was nice to have this family with current issues being addressed with a sense of humor. It incorporated all that we needed to know about being adults, adult children, grand-parenting and dealing with kids at any age. It could be summed up in one sentence: Laughter is the best medicine.
As life comes full circle in both TV and reality, you do need a sense of humor to pull you through a lot of stuff. Marriage, divorce, jobs, sickness & family need something to soften the edges. This is where ‘The Golden Girls’ comes into play. Here we are twenty years of reruns later with these ladies of comedy still tickling our funny bones. Their storylines are still relevant & antics hysterical. Now I hate to be the one to break it to you, but we have become the ‘golden girls’. I mean that in the kindest sense. We are friends through thick & thin, understanding & empathetic to all that life throws at us. We’re also willing to charge ahead into uncharted waters of new projects while treasuring the past.
We sit, we laugh, we cry & reminisce with lifetime connections to our TV families. They were a great comfort to us over the years….and still are. These memories are also our bond to the masses as we continue to watch the reruns over & over again. All these retro channels are a confirmation that there is still a connection through the airwaves and we are not alone. They have become our friends. It’s quite the emotional bond. It’s as if we expect them to recognize us should we pass on the street. We have them as we have each other. Friends forever.
Cathy
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