The Best Predictor You'll Be A Happy, Well-Adjusted, Adult

I have an unofficial barometer for measuring which years will be happiest for you.  Will they be the four teenage ones you spent in high school or will they be the vast majority of the rest of your life?  For the popular bunch who consider high school "the best years of their lives," unfortunately, they will probably forever remain so.  For the rest of us who remember high school as a bit "challenging," if not "impossible at times," the best is either now or yet to come.

Think of what that microcosm of time we call high school was really like.  It was a time when you had no responsibilities, and getting attention was first and foremost in your mind.  You were at an age where you were at your most selfish.  Hardly a time when one becomes equipped with the necessary resources for adulthood. If you were one of the popular crowd, exclusion was what you were all about since in order to BE popular, those not in your crowd, i.e,. the rest of us, would have to be left out of the loop. These are not good qualities to help you go forward through life.

I found this point illustrated beautifully in the movie "Young Adult." I finally rented it after being intrigued by the premise when it was released in the theaters last year. Charlize Theron plays Mavis, a thirty-seven-year-old divorced writer of novels for teenage girls, who now lives in Minneapolis with her little dog and is writing the very last book of her series which is soon to be cancelled forever.  She returns to her small hometown in Minnesota where she was once a "popular" girl, and she misses her high school boyfriend, Buddy, and that period of time which was the "best years of her life."


She decides to claim Buddy back as her boyfriend despite the fact that he's now settled down with a wife and newborn daughter!  Mavis calls him up, and Buddy agrees to meet with her platonically.  Later, he invites Mavis to see his wife's "mom rock band" perform at a club where she's the drummer, and all the other members are also moms.  They perform a song from their high school era which Mavis still considers to be her and Buddy's song.  That part was very symbolic to me because earlier we had seen Mavis listening to the song from a mixtape while driving in her car on her quest to get Buddy back, but when Buddy's wife performs that song with her "mom rock band," Buddy's wife reclaims it. Time has moved on. It's her song now. Hers and the rest of her band.  Buddy is all smiles while he watches his wife perform. You can see how happy he is. How settled. This is reality now.


At the end of the movie, Mavis marvels at the fact that "People here are satisfied with so little."  If high school hadn't raised her expectations so high, meaning that she must always be popular and better than everyone else, she wouldn't still have a false sense of entitlement.  She is now a member of the adult population.  She is just one adult among many.  Neither special nor entitled.  If "so little" means being happily married with a wife and daughter and having some fun on the weekends seeing your wife's "mom band" play, then yes, I guess the people in this town are satisfied with very little.  And yes, I'd choose that reality over being prom queen any time!

Whatever Happened To Good TV?

I'm anxious for this Reality TV craze to be over.  REALLY anxious.  It's got to be over soon, I mean, it can't last forever.  Of course, I've been saying this for the past ten years! TV crazes have always come and gone.  There was the night time soap craze of the 70's and 80's:  "Dallas," "Dynasty," "Knots Landing" and "Falcon Crest" to name a few.  "Dallas" completely took over pop culture consciousness!  I distinctly remember how much everyone talked about the Spring of 1980 cliffhanger where somebody shot J.R., the lead character of the show played by Larry Hagman.  Even all of us kids were obsessed with finding out "Who Shot J.R.?" We hadn't even SEEN the episode, but we just needed to know "Who Shot J.R.?" 

Later in the 1990's there was the "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire" game show craze.  Everybody watched it, and everybody was dialing up the pre-audition telephone test because they felt a duty to be a contestant on the show if they were able to answer the majority of the questions while watching from home.  Even Regis Philbin's wardrobe with its shiny ties and suits were analyzed and copied.  But at least the popularity of these two TV crazes didn't kill the basic format of the other shows on during that time period.  There were still daytime soaps and family sitcoms, and there were still game shows like "Wheel of Fortune" (which is still on today and still uses its basic original format) . These crazes didn't hurt anybody, but Reality TV has killed the Writer.

Reality TV's simplistic and uninspired dialogue, and the plots that are acted out (yes, they ARE "acted out," as Reality TV is scripted, albeit poorly), are about as far from reality as any other fictitious TV show has ever been.  But what's worse is that it prevents writers from being hired to actually write good TV.  There are a handful of shows still trying to peep their heads out from under all this reality nonsense.  I try to cheer myself up by watching "The Good Wife," a  law drama in which the writing is excellent.  Good writers actually sit down and think about how to make the plots and characters both thought-provoking and socially-conscious, and even when you think you've gotten the whole theme of the night's episode figured out, the writers manage to throw you a curve ball at the very end so that what you thought you knew and believed the show was trying to tell you was actually something completely different.  Becoming a regular viewer of "The Good Wife" has helped make me feel better, but my most recent rental from Netflix actually made me feel worse.

From 1990-1995, a weekly, hour-long TV show named "Northern Exposure" had its run.  It was about a New York City doctor named Joel who was transplanted to a small town called Cicely that was in Alaska.  I felt a special kinship with Joel back then because I was a New York City girl who lived in Canada during that same time period!  When I rented it from Netflix and watched it for the first time after many years, it really hit home how much we've been missing from TV.  "Northern Exposure" could be a novel rather than a TV show.  The characters are so well planned out.  Maggie Malone was always my personal favorite.  I used to pop kernels from a popcorn bag every night in a saucepan on the stove rather than buying the microwave version because that's how Maggie did it from her log cabin kitchen.  I wanted to feel like she did.  I long to live in a relaxed town and experience the easy lifestyle of Cicely, Alaska, escaping the fast pace and stressfulness of reality (or even Reality TV where they're always screaming and fighting).  I can become so absorbed in her story. 

One of the episodes on my Netflix rental was called "Nothing's Perfect."  It centered around an older character named "Maurice" who was a former United States astronaut and was the wealthiest inhabitant of Cicely. In this particular episode, he orders a very expensive clock from Germany which is a one-of-a-kind treasure in both its rareness and beauty, but after showing it off to his friends, he discovers that it doesn't keep perfect time!  Maurice is furious and wants his money back, but then he mulls it over. He tells us about how when he was a young astronaut, he thought he would live forever, but now that he's older, he knows that time is not something he can control.  He wants to keep the clock to admire its beauty and to hold onto the small moments in life and to enjoy them and savor them while he can.  Thus, this episode reinforces my disdain for Realty TV. If time is fleeting, and our moments are precious and few, why should we all be forced to waste it on Reality TV?