When I was 7, TV was my crystal ball. I really trusted it to tell me what life would be like when I was a teenager. TV was completely wrong, of course, because I never dated a Zach Morris in high school and I never developed a rack of epic proportions that made my older sister jealous. Which brings me unveil to you the most pivotal moments in television during the nineties. The TV moments that changed my life.
When Corey Cheated on Topanga
Remember the ski lodge? Remember that whore named Lauren who leeched off all the bum-legged tourist skiers who innocently spent the day off the slopes at the fireplace? Yea. Lauren, you are the root of all future problems between the most perfect TV couple of all time. Corey and Topanga were untouchable until YOU ruined everything with your ill-hidden perfumed pink letter. I grew up watching Boy Meets World and thinking that one day I would fall in love and it would be as perfect as what Corey had with Topanga. Then your little episode debut of DOOM came along. After 14 minutes I quickly realized that Corey Matthews was just another cheating hormone-induced cluster of XY chromosomes. Your episode taught me that love is FRAUD and the perfect love doesn’t exist.
When Jack Came Out on Dawson’s Creek
In the nineties, TV decided to shed light on a fairly taboo issue by making Capeside’s ultimate guy’s guy, Jack McPhee, gay. I’ll be honest, the extent of what I knew about being gay was what I heard the boys yelling at each other during recess at school. Jack coming out was my first introduction to a (fictional) gay person. And hey it even allowed critics to casually ignore the absence of black people and other issues not stereotypically white in nature.
When Al Got Boobs on Step by Step
This episode led me to believe that one day in high school I would unexpectedly wake up with huge jugs, which I would at first hate, then in 30 minutes with the aid of my loving stepmother would grow to love. My sister would be jealous of my bodacious body. My brother would creepily ogle me. Life would be good. This turned out to be a false prediction.
When Becca and Tucker FINALLY Kissed
Built entirely around the sexual tension between two 14 year-olds, Disney’s Flash Forward just had to wait until the very last episode to get these two to kiss. Classic story of the goofy, funny “friend” guy who gets the girl, Tucker’s character is the type of guy I developed a soft spot for. I’m glad that I’m not followed around by melancholy music all the time, though.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Saved by the Bell, Full House, Growing Pains, and all those other unmentioned 90s TV shows — but none of those really changed my life.
Here we are again at that magical time of year when the mall has mandated with its decor that October 31st is the perfect time to start thinking about Christmas shopping. But in these tough economic times, do we really have the money like we did last year to buy Uncle Harry that wireless talking meat thermometer from The Sharper Image? Definitely not. (And if we do have the money, we’re putting it towards a foreclosed shack on the beach that just got $8000 cheaper.)
I have had my share of poor Christmases. One Christmas, when I was 16, I bought my best friend a cardboard cut-out of Gollum from Lord of the Rings. She never actually saw the movie. Still, this Christmas is going to be the most epic of poor Christmases because everyone else is poor too. Maybe we’ll have one of those The Grinch Who Stole Christmas -Christmases, you know, minus the part where a grinch steals all the gifts, but keeping the part where everyone decides at the end that they love each other and that Christmas gifts really don’t matter. Which is so untrue. I keep a hierarchy of friendships based purely upon how much each person spends on me for Christmas. Note: Katie, you’re in the danger zone. Better step it up.
Enter: My solution to end your empty wallet woes this holly-jolly season. A list of home-grown Christmas ideas with most items found at your local Family Dollar, or at most retail plazas on suburban bus routes, because you had to sell your car.
For the Teenage Girl in Your Life
First off, I hope you’re not a 52 year-old man. If you are, hopefully this teenage girl is your daughter or niece. That being said, let’s move on.I envision a gift basket. Contents may include
a pregnancy test, $3.99 at FamilyDollar.com. If you’re her Dad, this means you can kill two birds with one stone by avoiding that uncomfortable sex talk, and give her a practical Christmas gift that she or one of her hysterically crying friends will find useful.
Bag of Hershey kisses, discounted to $1.00 during post-Halloween sale at Rite Aid. When her boyfriend dumps her for not giving it up at the prom, the chocolate will be waiting faithfully at home.
Proactiv free trial. Warning: Remove from gift basket should said teenage girl have PMS. You might wind up dead. But your heart is in the right place.
For the Hypochondriac in Your Life
For him or her, these must be really scary times. Put them at ease with your homemade H1N1 Prevention Kit.
A free trial subscription to Netflix. The third grader who wrote this eHow article on Swine flu prevention recommends avoiding large public gatherings. Your little friend is going to be spending a lot of time alone watching romantic comedies.
A personalized face mask, $3.00. Go wild with the googly eyes and glitter pens.
Wall of the United States with box of red and black pins, $10.00. They can create their own personal version of the real-time map of H1N1 infections across the United States. It’s like a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with a fatal twist. And practical, too. They can be reminded every second of every day of the impending pandemic.
3 bottles of Robitussin Cough Medicine. If things really get tough — you know, if they actually become one of those red little Game of Life -looking markers on the above map, at least they can throw three sheets to the wind and go Robo-trippin like that 14 year-old kid on Intervention.
For that person you hate but are obliged to give a Christmas gift to
When you are a child you cannot have a brownie before dinner. You cannot go to Katie’s house at 10pm when tomorrow is a Wednesday and there is school in the morning. You learn what is taught, and Miss Abbott tells you to get your coat and you go to recess. You move in a crowd with all the others. At fifteen, you fall madly in love for a boy who might as well be on the other side of the earth and your heart burns to be next to his. You grow and wait and grow and change and wait until it is possible to be in the same room as him, though it is never quite enough, and you like this feeling. You go to the wrong college and leave school entirely — it feels dirty and shameful and not like you at all, but then it is the first time in your life you have done something of your own will. You feel alive. Disappointment dwells on your doorstep, but, it is your doorstep and you fully believe that there is nothing anyone can do to take that away.
This is the happiest time of your life. Your life. Because it is uncontrollable, unpredictable, you are poor and hungry and live off of cigarettes and loud music and the company of your best friend and those that you invite inside to entertain you. You are indestructible. You have not changed yet.
It is three years later when you are sitting on a couch in a very different house which you have known since you were born. This is home now, textbooks carpet your bedroom floor, there is food in the pantry and you know exactly what you must do tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next and… You ask and you wonder why no one else hovers above themselves and watches their movements when they get up in the morning, feeling that being awake is no different from being in bed. This is a mid-life crisis at age 22. And aside from out-of-body experiences, you are an addict who is always searching for that perfect high (figuratively speaking), who never reaches climax. You vigorously exercise to feel something, and the closest you come to feeling anything inside is when you listen to music and remember being fifteen again.
At the end of the day you know you will wait until spring to graduate into the recession — which is unexciting. But after you will flee this boring comfort you have grown accustomed to and hopefully feel alive again, somewhere else and balancing with slippery feet upon the edge of a boat. And you cannot wait to fall in.
When Corey Cheated on Topanga
When Jack Came Out on Dawson’s Creek
When Al Got Boobs on Step by Step
