WHO'S ON FIRST?

I was a rebellious kid before I met the Lord.  I tried to do as my parents told me and expected of me, but some temptations were far too great for me to overcome.  My mother was strict and had some rules that I was terrified to break.  I was threatened within an inch of my life and I believed my mother capable of wringing my neck if I overstepped her boundaries.

But, still, there was that one line I was dying to cross!  It beckoned to me every day.  Every. Single. Day.

It started innocently enough.  Usually in summer.  You know how it was.  I was a latchkey kid; home alone all day long in the summer.  By myself.  Left to my own devices.  A child giving into that one big temptation.  I didn't mean for it to happen.  There were those "gateway" sins that came first.

Like.....the Monkees.  They were on at noon every day.  And I watched.  No harm, no foul.  Later, in the day when I was older, I watched All My Children.  Still no issue.  Yet, I was flirting closer and closer to disaster every day I turned on the TV.  Each day, turning on the set a little earlier.  Each day dancing closer to the line of no return.  And then....one day....I did it.  I turned on the TV at 10 in the morning and watched....

THE BRADY BUNCH!!!  

The Bradys were contraband in my house.  My mother had no issue with Gilligan, the Monkees, Bewitched and the rest of the re-run crowd....but the Bradys were completely off limits!  And I have to admit....they never helped my cause.  My mother hated the way Mike and Carol never had to actually discipline the kids. (Secretly, I think it had nothing to do with the kids, I think my mom was jealous that Carol had a full time housekeeper).  I hated how the kids totally repented and obeyed after one small reprimand of, "Now Marsha."  "Now Greg."  But, still....it was just a TV show.  When I started watching what had always been restricted to me, I began to see that the Brady Bunch was really no big deal.  It actually wasn't even that great of a show.  And I began to wonder about all those other shows that were forbidden to me.

There was actually a whole slew of entertainment that I was not allowed to watch.  My mother HATES The Wizard of Oz, but my father could not wait to share with me and  is now one of my favorite movies. When I was a kid, the Wizard was only on TV once a year during Spring Break.  I was always thankful for the times when it was my Dad's turn to have me during that holiday, so I could watch Dorothy and her friends get over on that icky, green witch.  Something my mom would never allow.

Don't get me wrong though.  My Mom loves movies.  Albeit, not the ones I would have liked as a child.  My mom was so excited to share her favorite movie with me when I was six.  My first movie with an intermission!  Just like in the fancy movies!!!  You know why movies have intermissions?  Because they keep you from breaking out in hysterics from boredom.  The movie my mom took me to?  Gone with the Wind.  Which I now can appreciate as  3 hours of cinematic masterpiece....but at six years old, was the most terrible form of torture I could imagine.  I didn't even get popcorn!!!!!  I was hardly old enough to know what Viet Nam was, let alone a war that occurred over a hundred years before!!!  Watching this movie, by the way, subjected me to more cruel and unusual punishment, like Joan Baez music.  For days after we saw Gone with the Wind, my mother would play The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down on her Joan Baez album over and over and over and over again...ad nauseum.  I still break out in a cold sweat when I hear that song.

So, as you can see, I was quite neglected limited in what I was allowed for my viewing pleasure.  While other little girls were curling their hair in sponge rollers and entering Shirley Temple look-alike contests (which, by the way, Cindy Brady did in an episode of the Brady Bunch), I was  reenacting Scarlett's big scene before the much needed intermission...."As God as my witness, I will never be hungry again!" (complete with realistic retching sounds).    While other girls were auditioning in their drama classes with Somewhere Over the Rainbow, I was stuck leading Joan Baez sing-alongs!

And then something happened that amazed me.  My Mom became a Grammy.  When my three girls were 3, 6 and 9, do you know what my mother brought to them because "every little girl should have these"?  THREE, not one, but THREE Shirley Temple movies!!!  Are you kidding me?  If a Shirley Temple commercial was even on in my house, my mother was yelling at me to turn the channel!  NOW...after years of humiliation and missed dance classes, NOW, my mother thinks she is great?!  I believe she has actually been present when the kids watched the Wizard of Oz, too.  As Bill Cosby would say,"That is not the woman I grew up with!  That is an old woman trying to buy her way into Heaven!"

Anyway....having been greatly limited in what was allowed to be on TV in my house, I now have a great appreciation for some of those shows that I WAS allowed to watch.  Lately, I have been excited to share I Love Lucy and Laverne and Shirley with my girls!  They really enjoy those comedic ladies.

But, last night, I shared one of my very favorite movies of all time.  A classic like no other. And the reason I know it so well, was because of that Shirley Temple ban.  The first thing I was allowed to watch on Sunday was the weekly, noontime showing of whatever Abbott and Costello were meeting that week.  Sometimes I would even risk my mother's dismay by turning on the TV and hearing the last of the Shirley Temple credits, as her movie ended at 11:59, just so I wouldn't miss one comical moment of Lou and Bud.  

Last night, we did Abbott and Costello Meets Netflix Instantplay.......and my kids LOVED it!

Thanks, Mom!!!!