Saved By My So-Called 90210 Life

Jordan. Catalano.

I’m just going to leave that there. You’re welcome.

The Claire Danes juggernaut that was My So-Called Life was a quintessential show for many of us growing up in the 90’s, and it was not until I was older that I realized it was only on for ONE SEASON! It was so impactful and formative I felt like it was in my life for so much longer than it obviously was. It was a show that made you FEEL something - not that you needed to deal with any more feelings than you already have rushing through you as a teenager. But maybe that was its affect - that it made you feel less alone to see Angela, Brian, Rayanne, Sharon and Rickie try to navigate the overwhelming emotional mess that can be adolescence.

Hey, I’m not saying Beverly Hills 90210 did not do that. (Dylan McKay, you have my heart forever.)

And although Patricia and I grew up in a different country on the opposite coast then the BH90210 kids (shout out to Canuck Jason Priestley), there was no where else you were Thursdays at 9:00pm then in front of your TV watching the Brenda/Dylan/Kelly love triangle unfold, waiting to see if Donna and David were going to do it on prom night and witnessing poor Andrea pine after Brandon like Betty to Archie. It was Peach Pit or bust in those days.

But if for whatever reason you could not meet up with the gang on Thursdays at the Peach Pit, there was always The Max on Saturdays. Who could ever forget the episode of Saved By The Bell where Jessie takes uppers, "I’m so excited, I’m so excited…I'm so, scared!” And if all of these references still don’t speak to you, there was always Blossom (WOAH!), Full House before it was Fuller, Sam and the gang at Cheers, Winnie and Kevin exploring their Wonder Years and British butler Geoffrey slinging one-liners at Uncle Phil on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (Uncle Phil: "Geoffrey, bring me my tools." Geoffrey: "Do you mean your knife and fork sir?")

There was also a small group of F.R.I.E.N.D.S that had just started hanging out...

As echoed in Patricia’s previous story, "The analog to digital undocumented decade", watching TV was a little different in our day then it is now: “bingeing” referred to food, “surfing” was a water sport, the only thing mounted on the walls were ultra frilly window treatments and the only screen in the house was the television set itself.

But no matter how much television viewing changes with the advancement of time and technology, the heart of it remains true to whatever shows were/are formative for you in your teenage years…

IMAGINATION.

Imagination of a life outside of your own. Whether you were happy at home or maybe not so much, it allowed you to enter a world that was different. There are many, many ways to do this – books, drawing, theater, film, writing, sports, dance, cooking, singing, listening to music, playing music… whatever it is, imagination is your mind’s chance to BREATHE.

Here’s my thought kids – in our current climate we all have an overwhelming number of screens in our daily lives, so many in fact, we are rarely looking at less than two at any given time. When was the last time you watched TV without your phone nearby? How many screens do you have on the go as you read this post? Our minds are constantly being bombarded with… well, EVERYTHING. And we MUST remember to daydream, imagine, breathe. Life is too long not to…

There was nothing that was going to stop my teenage self from being in front of that TV at 9:00pm on Thursdays for BH90210, I was COMMITTED to that time, to let myself step out of my current world and be absorbed into another. It was what, when we were little kids, called “story time.”

And what did you do during story time? You let your imagination run wild.

I have no idea what the kids are watching these days, but I hope that there’s an Angela Chase, Jordan Catalano, Dylan McKay, Lisa Turtle or Carlton Banks that takes your imagination and runs with it all the way into adulthood.

Love,
Grace

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