Regular readers of this blog (I think there are a couple of you) know that I did the Catholic school version of junior high; first through eighth grades at one school. I had a nun for a teacher six of those eight years. And I just realized today at lunch — Monday is chicken and mashed potatoes day…mmmmm…taters — that I didn’t have a male teacher until ninth grade. Then, all of a sudden, I have a math teacher who has me “by the short hair” and an English teacher who throws erasers at us if we turn our heads away from him. Dunno what that might mean, but I do know that a lot more of today’s kids need a father-type figure in their lives. Who has them by the short hair, so to speak.
Anyway, we were “introduced” to the idea of confession in second grade. I’m sorry if I’m offending anyone, but even then, I was like..Hello? I don’t think I’m going to go tell a stranger all the bad things I did, or even THOUGHT about doing. Not exactly the way the second-grade mind works. Or seventh-grade. Or… Especially if you had brothers like mine. I did like the idea that you could ask for forgiveness for all the bad stuff you’d done, and if you did it right before you died, you were gold! A life of crime and debauchery? Deathbed confession, and you’re solid. Of course the nuns always tried to remind us that we might die suddenly in a car crash or whatever, and never get the opportunity to make that deathbed confession. “And then where would ye be? Hell, that’s where. Eternal roastin’ and sufferin’. And good riddance to ye too.” Those crazy Gaelic nuns from old country Ireland; they were so nutty.
All this is supposed to lead up to my big confession. “Hello, my name is mrC, and I’m a…TVaholic.”
I know, as an English teacher, I’m supposed to frown upon TV. But…
Some of my most vivid childhood memories involve the TV. Sneaking back downstairs to catch Carson’s monologue, getting busted doing the same to watch Helter Skelter appear on TV the first time, watching the fiery car crash on the intro to Hawaii 5-0 for the first time on a color TV, Jack Lord’s ties, faking sick so I could watch game shows like Password and Split Second and the original $10,000 Pyramid, Dick Van Dyke Show reruns in black and white with Mary Tyler Moore in capris, Schoolhouse Rock on Saturdays between cartoons. Cigarette ads! (“Taste me, taste me, c’mon and taste me.”) We only had 4 or 5 stations we could get decently, even with our tall antenna and rotor setup, but there was always something worth watching: Andre the Giant vs the Wrestling Midgets, Land of the Lost, Three Stooges reruns (“What? Another Shemp?”), McCloud.
So all this is to say, that instead of posting yesterday as I had intended, I was watching House and Lie to Me.
I should do a post some day about seventh graders and lying. You’d think they’d be good at it, but… you’d be wrong.
