I stumble across a Laverne & Shirley Reunion this morning on Yahoo and realized wow!!! Do I miss real entertaining TV. I know it makes me sound ancient but I grew up with shows like Laverne & Shirley. Since it was filmed in Milwaukee (right around the corner) it gave me hope and inspiration that there was more to life than milking cows and country lanes.
My up bringing was in a very conservative home where women didn't work outside the house and their future plans were to get married (and obey.) The only acceptable career aspiration for someone without the holy Y chromosome was to be a mother. We were not rich enough to dream about going to college and finding a husband; no, your choices were your neighbor's son (the farmer) or the guy at church, who maybe (if you were lucky) had a profession, something like a plumber. If those two didn't cut it, our you didn't cut it for them, then you may become the dreaded "spinster." But fortunately for me I was little in the 70's and shows like Laverne & Shirley gave me the hope that I needed.
I wasn't allowed to watch the show because of it's raciness but often I would sneak down and sit on the stairs to watch or possibly whine enough so that I could at least catch part of the week's episode. It showed me that these two women were able to make it on their own, be happy, date (without falling straight to the pits of hell) and have all kind of amazing adventures right in my home state making me realize that I didn't have to end up a farmer's wife. No disrespect to farm wives anywhere; it is just that it is sooooooo much work and I didn't want to do it. I wanted to be where the action was, the excitement was and I wanted to be OK if I decided not to get married. Unfortunately as fate would have I did get married (and divorced) young anyway but I have to give some credit to the influence of 70's pop culture for the path I took to get where I am now. I am independent and I do have a career and I do live in a city where things are always happening (not quite the crazy antics that you would see on the show but sometimes it could be close.)
The thing is, when I was growing up I was constantly told that I could be only one thing in life but with shows like Laverne & Shirley, Mary Tyler Moore & Happy Days, it showed me that I could be basically be anything I wanted and still have a bright future. Unfortunately I do not see that in today's television, often this generation is being shown images of people halfway killing themselves to do stupid pranks or sitting on a fake island somewhere pretending to be a "Survivor" or swearing and cussing in Jersey while doing beer bongs. I hope that some day soon they will go back to producing things that are entertaining while still teaching young people that life can be fun and exciting with out the negative drama. Show them something we would want them to aspire to be; don't teach them that it is alright and normal for a young lady to get in bar fights. Laverne & Shirley may not have been exactly who you would want to have your kids growing up to be but they at least they were not a 14 year old mother-to-be in the middle of literal soap opera life; now that is what I hope my grand kids look up to, Not!
Oh Well at least we have reruns and YouTube, enjoy....
