Title : When the ABC Afterschool Special Was a Fact of Life
link : When the ABC Afterschool Special Was a Fact of Life
When the ABC Afterschool Special Was a Fact of Life
I made an ABC Afterschool Special joke the other day to a British friend that didn't entirely fall flat -- he'd heard of them -- but prompted him to ask me for details. At first blush, it seemed the whole phenomenon was what stuck with me more than any specific film. (I remember vivid details "Bad Ronald" and "Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway," but while from the same era neither were part of this series.)
But then a Gen X coworker of mine also made a joke about ABC Afterschool Specials -- they really were ingrained in us, weren't they? -- and with this little nudge we found ourselves reminiscing about a few that stood out -- "My Mom's Having a Baby" above all. As my colleague Dorene recalls, a whole generation of kids accidentally found our where babies came from without their parents' permission. While I'm sure the network intended it to be watched with your parents -- and promoted it as a learning opportunity -- it was 1977 and many of our moms already worked. So many of us were left to navigate these deep topics on our own.
As it would happen, I wasn't one of these kids. No, not because my parents were hip or progressive. I already knew about the facts of life because our flaky neighbor, Karen Muethel -- who you might recall I dressed as for Halloween one year -- had inexplicably taken it upon herself to TEACH ME about the birds and the bees one afternoon when I was over at her house. I don't have the strongest recollection of the whole event, but my parents sure do. All I remember is that I came home and brought up some detail about to my mother, who was horrified and immediately went into damage control. Try as she might, she clearly failed: I never wanted anything to do with vagina from that day on. Shortly thereafter, my parents awkwardly presented me with a book about where babies come from -- I remember it was a 8 x 10 hardcover deal with lots of drawings -- then immediately fled the house in horror for several hours and never mentioned it again. I flipped through it and returned to the basement to organize my Olivia Newton-John album collection.
I also recall "The Boy Who Drank Too Much" because it starred my teen fave Lance Kerwin, of "James at 15" fame and Chachi. Lance is a goody-goody worry wart and Scott Baio is a sex bomb who likes to have a good time -- so if the moral of the story was that drinking is bad, it was hard for me to see.
In the companion piece, Scott plays a nerd who turns to pot to loosen up. He immediately becomes way more fun and popular -- and suddenly gets the girl -- but we're still supposed to somehow believe that "grass" is bad for you, too.
Probably the last one I watched was "Schoolboy Father." By then my hormones were in top gear -- as were star Rob Lowe's, which is what got him into this mess. In it, Rob's character's life is ruined when he gets his summer-camp girlfriend pregnant, which was just more confirmation that I wanted nothing to do with girls or the outdoors.
Thus Article When the ABC Afterschool Special Was a Fact of Life
That's an article When the ABC Afterschool Special Was a Fact of Life This time, hopefully can give benefits to all of you. well, see you in posting other articles.
You are now reading the article When the ABC Afterschool Special Was a Fact of Life with the link address https://updated-1news.blogspot.com/2018/05/when-abc-afterschool-special-was-fact.html
0 Response to "When the ABC Afterschool Special Was a Fact of Life"
Post a Comment