Homeschooling

This past weekend was my cousin Brian and his fiancee Christina's engagement party here in Winston.  And boy was it a big weekend.  Sunday night, though, we had a low key dinner at Mom and Dad's to "unwind" a little and take it easy.  While we were eating, there was a Saturday Night Live special on NBC, highlighting some of the best commercials and skits from all of the years that SNL has been on the air.

As we sat there, Mom, Dad, Brian and I were in tears laughing and quoting right along with the oldest commercials and skits.  "Bass-o-Matic", "Shimmer Floor Wax", "Little Chocolate Donuts", "Bag of Glass".  "Point, Counterpoint", "Velvet Jones", "Two Wild and Crazy Guys"......the list goes on.

Christina thought we were crazy.

Here's the thing, though.  We weren't the kids that always watched kids shows and cartoons and sang typical kid songs growing up.  We were, as my mother always likes to call it, 'homeschooled'.

We didn't listen to lullabies and songs performed by kid characters growing up.  We lived in a house filled with James Taylor and Bruce Hornsby and Hall & Oates and Fleetwood Mac.  Dad would have had it no other way.

When I was no older than 5 or 6, I would stand in front of the television and sing every word to the theme song from "Cheers" when it came on.

I can quote almost all of "Coming to America" from memory, and Mom will throw out the "Shame what they did to that dog" line when you least expect it.

When I was a freshman in college, I promise you every girl on my dorm hall got a care package of things from their parents for Valentines Day that had a heart shaped picture frame or pink bear or something else holiday specific in it.  My care package had a DVD copy of Animal House in it.  Because of course it did.  Just the way I would have expected it.

And SNL.  Oh man.  I can quite literally rehash to you all of the very best skits - and thank you, most of them happened before I was even born.  Gilda Radner doing "Rosanna Rosanna Danna", Garrett Morris screaming from the bottom right hand corner of the screen for the 'hearing impaired'.  Belushi yelling "Chee-burger, chee-burger, chee-burger.  Pepsi.  No Coke."  Steve Martin doing "King Tut".

In a Journalism class my Senior year at State, I had a very very sarcastic and not always PC professor.  One day a girl in my class answered a question that he had asked and she was WAY off base.  As a joke, he whipped around and said "Jane, you ignorant slut."  Every single person in that class looked totally horrified, while I nearly fell out of my seat laughing.  He then realized that we were all probably too young to know what that was from, that it was a joke, and he then made me tell the whole class what it was from.  I may have saved him from a big mess that day just because of my 'homeschooling'.

Gotta be proud. :)

I wouldn't trade all of my 'culture and knowledge' from growing up for anything.  Never. 

Thanks, Mom and Dad!