Prompt: TV

What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

I have heard it said that Gen X was raised by television. My mother objects to that, but every day when I came home from elementary school, I would tune in to watch The Brady Bunch, The Flintstones, and Scooby-Doo on UHF channel 48. I also loved Gilligan’s Island and I Dream of Jeannie on channel 29.

I was known to watch Zorro and The Lone Ranger as well, speaking of old, live action TV shows. I also enjoyed The Land of the Lost, Shazam and Isis, The Monkees, H.R. Pufnstuf, and Star Trek.

Justice League was my Saturday morning go-to. I ate cereal in my pajamas and watched superheroes because you DID NOT wake your parents early on Saturday morning. If you did wake them, nobody was happy.

When I got to high school, my best friend and I watched Star Blazers “together” over the phone. It came on after He-Man, so we’d often watch and chat through that show as well. That was way back when what we now know as “anime” was regularly called “Japanimation.” (Many years later, this inspired me to joke that we should call US-made shows “Americanime.”)

I was also a HUGE fan of the Creature Double Feature on channel 29, early in the afternoon, after the morning cartoons and the mandatory Saturday housecleaning. It was back-to-back sci-fi and monster B-movies, generally old and in black and white. It was fantastic!

On Sunday night, the whole family gathered to watch Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom and The Wonderful World of Disney. That was always a good time, despite all the gazelles being eaten by lions and the like.

Holiday seasons brought on the holiday specials. They were special because they were aired once a year, and programming for kids in the evening was not really a thing, with the exception of the aforementioned Disney. Most of the specials are trips to Nostalgia Town for me, with the exception of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer which was traumatic for me every year. My mom finally sat down and really watched it a few years ago and was absolutely horrified.

Imagine how I felt as a kid when the characters I most closely identified with were the toys on the Island of Misfit Toys. Their happy ending was too little and too late for me. As far as I was able to discern, the moral of the story was that people will abuse you if you’re weird, at least until they suddenly have a use for you. As a weird, depressed little kid, I felt like that was the story of my life.

(Let me say it again: Raised. By. TV. )