Oh Roseanne...

Roseanne first aired when I was six years old.  When it finally got canceled in 1997, I was fifteen. 

My parents were big fans so I basically grew up with the series. 

Now, thirteen years later, I find myself flipping through the holiday episodes for Halloween and Thanksgiving and I gotta say, it brings me back to childhood in a really weird way.

Like the phone attatched to the wall in the kitchen. 

No matter how short the telephone cord was when we bought it- my mother would be able to stretch the thing from the kitchen all the way down to the hallway bedrooms when she did her cleaning.   Cordless phones were only a novelty back then.

And the big scruffy plaid furniture with hand-made Afghans thrown over the back cushions?  They could be found at pretty much every one of my aunt and uncle’s houses.  Along with plastic runners over the carpets.

It was a time when family gatherings were filled with beer, big hair, and raunchy jokes.

Those were the days.

It’s amazing that so much can change in a matter of two decades.  I’m only 28 for crying out loud!  But when I was born, there was no internet.  No cell phones. 

 The only interaction I had with a computer in elementary school was playing Oregon Trail on thin floppy disks with holes in the middle.  We had to shoot animals to survive and family members would drop like flies.  “Sorry, your daughter has died of the measles and your father shot himself in the eye.”--  I mean, that game really taught a child values.

So I guess this is a post about homesickness around the holidays.  Not necessarily for my family, friends, or my country.  The internet helps me stay close in a way I never would have been able to if this were twenty years ago… I’m talking about homesickness for those happy, simpler times when we were all together around a table, eating smartfood and laughing at shows like Roseanne that reflected the best of life as we knew it right then and there.