Television (A love letter)

I grew up a child of the tv. At the age of five, I knew all the storylines of The Guiding Light and for those of you who now or have ever watched a soap, you know how hard that can be. I can remember the tv guide scheduele for the last 20 years. One of my favorite nights of television as a kid was Friday nights. At 7 o'clock The Dukes of Hazard, at 8 o'clock Dallas and at 9 o'lcock Falcon Crest. It was like a member of the family died when Jock Ewing died. There's a girl that lives accross the street from me, who was born in 1988 and I was shocked when she told me she'd never heard of Dallas. I think Dallas should be taught in school as a part of Texas history. When I was a senior in High School, my alarm was the tv coming on. I let my kids watch tv now too, only not grown up shows. They say that tv is bad for chidren's imaginations but I'm living proof that's not the truth. Those of you who know me, know I've just finished a novel and I've been writing since I was a kid. I think back on all the great Series Finales I've seen: Dallas, Newhart,Frasier, Cheers, Friends, Knots Landing, Kate & Ally, Murphy Brown, Designing Women, Seinfeld and more. I think about how many shows I bonded over with friends. Shwari and I watched the 1st Buffy the Vampire Slayer together when we had our apartment and we watched the last episode together on the phone. I had to have surgery on a Tuesday one year and was more concerned with the thought of missing Buffy than the surgery itself. I didn't miss it, I was "high as a kite" but I didn't miss it. It was a good episode too. I love television but don't think because of that, that I don't read. I've read almost everyone of Stephen King's books and have y'all ever read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil? If not you've gotta read it. If you saw the movie, that was a slap in the face to the writer of that book, but back to television. When 9/11 happened, I watched the 2nd plane hit the WTC and then watched it collapse. In school we watched the Challenger blow up. I wasn't a "twinkle in my mother's eye" when this happened but millions of Americans watched the report of JFK being killed, only to be follwed a few days later when his alleged assassin was killed too. I was there when JFK jr., his wife and sister-in-law's plane went down. I knew they weren't gonna find him alive. Who doesn't remeber seeing the report that Princess Diana had a car accident. I said out loud to Brian, "Just like Princess Grace." It was just like Princess Grace, Princess Diana died and I watched the funeral. Whenever something happened and the news report broke in, if I wasn't already watching CBS, I would turn the channel to CBS to hear the bad news from Dan Rather. The day 9/11 happened, I spent more time with him than I did with my husband. I want to say publicly, I love you television and I'm not ashamed.