My bed time is 10PM. By this time, my eyes begin to get heavy, I start yawning profusely, and I begin to mentally talk myself out of setting up the coffee maker or cleaning the cats' litterbox out of exhaustion. By 10PM, I am pretty much done.
During the school year, especially during finals week, this time gets pushed back to 12 -- sometimes 1 depending on the amount of papers that I have to read. This finals season however, went without a hitch; i ended pulling only one over-nighter which is great.
However, I have found myself going to bed at 11 for the last six weeks, not because I have school work to do (which I do) and not because of insomnia (which I have usually), but because ION-TV (formerly PAX) has shown back-to-back episodes of The Wonder Years starting at 10PM.
The Wonder Years was my first television addiction (it would be Twin Peaks, but my parents stopped letting me watch it when it got to weird - i.e. good), it originally came on on Wednesdays at 8:30 followed by Doogie Howser MD which I was not a fan of. Wednesdays were the only nights of the week that I got my homework done as quickly as possible, had the chores completed on time, and made sure that no one would call me between 8:30 and 9:00.
I was 13 at the time which is the perfect age to watch The Wonder Years. I thought that the show was serendipitous: everything that happened to Kevin Arnold seemed to happen to me as well. When he tried out for baseball and kept making the cut despite his lousy performance, so did I. When he got into his first fight in the school hallways, so did I. And when he kissed Winnie -- his first french kiss -- I kissed Abby Gregory after a school dance.
For some reason, all of these episodes stuck with me. I only watched them during their original run and re-runs -- never the syndicated episodes that came on in the mid-nineties when I was totally grunged out and hated all generations but my own. Somehow, I am a walking The Wonder Years trivia encyclopedia: What was the name of Kevin's band? (The Electric Shoes). What did Kevin give Winnie for Christmas in Season One and what did she give him? (He gave her a snowglobe and she gave him a four-leaf clover). What was Kevin's first job? (Chinese Food delivery boy -- mine too, btw). What song played after Winnie's bus and Kevin's bus seperated on the highway because Winnie had transfered schools and found another boyfriend? ("God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys). Who narrated the adult Kevin Arnold voice? (Daniel Stern - the non-Joe Pesci bad guy from the Home Alone movies). What song did the eighth grade Glee Club "sing" at the Spring Sing? (Stout Hearted Men).
And to this day, I still fucking hate Kirk McRae.
But eventually the show went downhill, Fred Savage's voice got deeper than the narrator's. Winnie started to be whiney and condescending to Kevin and I began to realize that Kevin was stupid to not dump her and go after super hottie Madeline who was banging! I lost interest in the show and didn't watch the last two seasons, after they moved it to Fridays (parties were much more interesting to me at the time) and then finally the TV kiss of death: Sundays. It wasn't until the last episode that I watched a new show during its last season. Kevin and Winnie said their goodbyes to each other in a barn on a rainy night and during a slow-motion closing parade sequence, we are told that Karen settled down and had kids, his mom was still living in the old house, and Kev's dad died three years later, Wayne taking over the business.
But now, I am watching all the episodes again in order. It is fun to watch them: the emotions of being 13 come back everynight. I get nervous when Kevin and Winnie go to the make-out party, the same way I did the first time I watched it. And when Kevin hits the imaginary homerun at the end of the baseball try-out episode, I actually wish that for myself. One major difference: I find Wayne too funny and fantastic ("Hey Scrote, I heard you are going out with... Win-NAAAAAAAYYYY! So seriously, how is the Super-Cooper?") Chelsea is unintersted but giggles when the first scene comes on, the first line comes out of Daniel Stern's mouth, and I yell out the entire episode plot and outcome ("Oooooooh! This is the episode where Kevin stays after school to study for his algebra mid-term because he keeps getting C's, with Mr. Collins, who stops showing up, Kevin gets pissed and vandalizes his midterm and then his teacher dies! So, he gets to re-do it because Mr. Collins believed in him! At the end, Kevin says: 'No need to grade it, it is an A.' I love this one."To which Chelsea replies: "You love every one.")
The show taught me how to interpret symbolism, how to look beyond the information given to you and to determine what is implied rather than stated. I was 13 and was perfectly aware that each song was meant to be there -- purposefully chosen to represent something larger than the 23 minutes of TV time could. It is safe to say that my love of literature stems from this point, this TV show.
Looking back at those Wednesdays, I learned a lot about myself. And life.
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