What TV shows did you watch as a kid?
I was raised on TV shows like Gilligan’s island and the Brady Bunch. My reruns included I Love Lucy and the Honeymooners and the Dick Van Dyke show. My Saturday morning cartoons were Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. Sesame Street was the new show of the bunch. Because I’m Canadian, I watched Mister Dressup and the Friendly Giant and Kukla,Fran and Ollie. There were only 3 channels, and I was the remote control.
I was born in 1965,which makes me one of the oldest possible Gen Xers. It was a far more ‘innocent ‘ time, but there were some horrible things happening in small town Canada in those days, too ,like serial killing of young girls and genocide in indigenous schools. Small towns were where sexual predators were hiding. While some would call the TV, I grew up on classic TV, I look back on it as just another lie from my childhood, meant to sugarcoat what was actually happening to children . It was the era before TV began looking at the tougher conversations. Before After-school specials,before Diffrent Strokes and the episode where Arnold met a predator in the bicycle shop. Before helicopter, parenting was even a thought. We played games like lawn darts, and our parks had swings that were just a piece of rubber suspended by rusty chains and slides made from metal that took layers of skin from us during the summer months. Many of us spent the hours between after school and the time our parents got home from work at home alone, blissfully ignorant of the fact that we were prey. It’s a wonder that any of us survived. This means that those of us who did are likely the strongest people on the planet .
To be fair, that sounds like much of what I watched most days. And pretty much how I grew up in the inner city — although I had a stay-at-home mother. Still… I look back and I think… wow… how did we (mostly) avoid dying?
To be fair, there were a few deaths of classmates before their time…
And, apparently, “to be fair” is my thing today.
And should be every day for all of us. 😊
Absolutely 💯. The whole world was that way then.
Although my daughter was born in 1970 your mention of some of the television programs reminded me of how I learned not to mix meals with tv time. Sesame Street was helpful, if watched at the right time.
So true supper around the table at 6pm and then it was time to go to the living room and watch TV
This is a fun post! My daytime shows were really important to me, and that’s as early as I can recall. Friendly Giant, Mr. Dressup, and Sesame Street were my favorites, then Flintstones came on after that. I never watched the French channel. Now I wish I had; maybe I would have learned more about the language.
There were a few good Canadian series: The Littlest Hobo (German Shepherd lead role), George (Swiss-Canadian show with a St. Bernard lead role), Hilarious House of Frightenstein. It’s sad the latter had just one season. I loved it, and still find it really entertaining and amusing as an adult.
I also watched Diff’rent Strokes, Facts of LIfe, Brady Bunch, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie (especially for the NASA theme), Incredible Hulk, Six Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, Quincy, M.E. Any series about investigations or U.S. Government espionage/spy themes, especially if it was based in Washington D.C. had my name on it.
Today I still watch 70s and 80s T.V. with an antenna on the “retro” channels. My son is almost 32, but when he was four years old, he was repeatedly in trouble at preschool for a “smart mouth” with the teachers. This time they sent home a note about it, saying that when he was told or asked to do something he would sarcastically reply, “Oh, YES master!”
It wasn’t until he was college when I read the note from the teacher that I realized he had been watching I Dream of Jeannie with me since he was in utero! Since then I’ve thought that TV script he was using was hilarious. I still do that with many lines from shows.
Thanks for sharing! I especially like posts like this because nostalgia is really important for my mental health.
Funnily enough, my little brother used to say Yes,master to my dad and cross his little arms and blink too.