Just Like Myself
I sent Ted into gales of laughter this morning, quite without meaning to. He was watching Little House on the Prairie while I was making lunch, and he called me in to see a very young Shannen Doherty, whom he said was one of Melissa Gilbert's kids. So I watched this for a minute and then it was time to go, and I asked if *all* those kids were supposed to be Laura's. Ted said yeah, and I sort of snorted derisively. It's been at least fifteen years since I've read the Laura books, but I'm pretty certain she only had a couple of kids, and that Rose is the only one who survived to adulthood.
So I was telling him that, and said that I'd turned the television off in a fit of disgust one day while watching the show, literally in the middle of an episode, and asked him if he knew who Mary was. He said, yeah, she was the blind one and she married a blind guy but he got better.
As a matter of fact, *that* was the episode I'd shut the tv off during. For one thing, I don't think Mary ever married, although I could be quite wrong about that, so that irritated me to begin with. However, the really stupid bit that pissed me off was that he was struck by *lightning* and regained his vision.
I got up and turned the tv off and never watched the show again.
When I told him this, Ted began laughing, and still hadn't stopped when we got to the train station several minutes later.
He said I couldn't have been more than ten when that happened. I'm sure I wasn't more than ten. I'm not at all sure I was that old. I primarily remember watching Little House in the old old house, which we moved out of just after I'd turned six. So it's wholly possible that I was as little as six when I did this. I'd certainly read all the Little House books by then; I remember distinctly one afternoon when I was 9, I read the entire series again, and someone who was over commented on it because I was getting up every 90 minutes or so to go get another book. And I'd read them several times before that reread, so it's entirely likely that at age 6 I was familiar enough with the books to be mortally offended by the stupid lightning story.
And Ted thinks this is just great, because it's Just Like Me. He says he can just see little tiny me looking all outraged and offended and turning the tv off and stomping out of the room -- which is, I think, what I did. I certainly remember wanting to bitch about the stupid storyline to someone, and I probably did go bitch about it to whatever hapless parent was about.
Ted laughed and laughed and laughed. It was good to know, he said, that I was always going to be just like I am now, since clearly I've always been just like I am now. He also said he fears the day that he pisses me off to the degree that twenty years later I'm still offended by it. He was afraid of what I'd do to him.
I pointed out that if he outraged my morality to that degree, I wouldn't do anything to /him/; I'd just pack up my stuff and leave. Turn the tv off, and never watch the show again. I'm not entirely sure that reassured him, but there you have it. I'm Just Like Myself.