Nostalgia certainly has a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it.
Tuesday night I began my evening listening to music from the 1980s and somehow segued into an almost two-hour television theme song marathon.
While growing up, I watched a number of contemporary shows, but my favorites were classics.
A few of my favorites included “Get Smart,” “The Three Stooges,” “Bewitched,” “Maude,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “The Jeffersons,” “Little House on the Prairie,” “All in the Family,” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
I could go on, but that would take up more space than I have.
One of the major things I enjoyed about those televisions shows was their ability to be wholesome, suspenseful or comedic without using foul language or an exorbitant amount of violence.
Now, I do enjoy shows that feature a lot of these components today, but as an adult, I’m able to differentiate between right and wrong.
However, young adults are still learning that distinction and are very impressionable.
Even most cartoons are full of adult themed innuendos that some adults don’t understand.
The shows I grew up watching featured family values, quirky bad guys and detectives. To me, the overall quality was just better and more appropriate for families with small children.
Now, I’m not saying television shaped my life. My parents were responsible for that. But, I could relate to so many scenarios and sometimes learned how to deal with life’s problems by listening to Pa Ingalls counsel his daughter Laura.
The memories of these television shows live on in reruns or a boxed DVD set. Today, I wish more writers would create shows with less violence and foul language and bring back scripts with more classic family values.
In the future, if I do have children, I want them to learn some wisdom from Pa Ingalls, solve a crime with Andy Griffith and Barney Fife, elude Mr. Claw with Maxwell Smart and dream big with Mary Tyler Moore.