While reading some back post on one of my favorite EMS blogs, I came across this conversation…(http://ambulancedriverfiles.com/?feb_network_search_context=blog&s=verbatim+conversation+with+a+six+year+old+this+morning I’m still learning how to make those cute hyperlinks). In it AD states he isn’t sure how he feels about his daughter watching some of the shows she watches. It got me thinking. I know and usually side with the childrearing gurus that say limit a child’s TV time, and limit the content (blah, blah, blah…). However, I was one of those kids, like AD’s little Stinkerbelle, that liked TV shows that technically should have been over my head. Obviously this was before Cinemax, HBO, and MTV, and MTV showed music videos when they did come along. Imagine!
I liked cartoons, but I would pick the syndicated sitcoms over cartoons after school when I was a kid. Most of my friends did not watch Archie Bunker, the Jefferson’s, or Maude (that might explain a few things to my friends now). I would watch the late night police shows with my grandfather when we visited in the summer. Baretta was normally on after my bed time, but not at Grandpa’s! Everyone watched Mickey Mouse and Batman, but I always made time for Emergency! when it came on. Some of my friends did too. But they would watch the fire trucks with their lights and sirens running over hell and back and go back to playing until the next time the sirens came on. I did the opposite. I played with my toys until the medical stuff got started. That was the part I liked. My friends thought it was a little odd. “Didn’t you see that cool ladder truck?” While I’m asking “didn’t you see them fix his low blood sugar?”
Looking back there where other telltale signs. I couldn’t understand why my friends didn’t find it frustrating that one episode would find the doctor ordering saline for a condition, and the next episode he would order something else for the same condition. I thought it was really cool to try to figure this stuff out! Apparently when you’re seven, people just think you’re weird. My little kindergarten friends would just whisper “she seems so normal, usually.” It affected my career choices, too. While sitting in the recruiter processing station I had my choices narrowed down to two jobs. Fire fighter or security police officer in the Air Force. Here I am, seventeen years old making a career decision and looking for reference points to base it on. The only two Native Americans (like myself) that I have seen in these careers are Johnny Gage and Barretta. Hmmh. Well, Baretta had a bad hangover about every third episode, but they tried to kill Gage about every other episode. So I told the recruiter I would be happy to go to the police academy. I decided the fire service wasn’t quite ready for Native Americans just yet.
I also learned something else watching Emergency! Sometimes the characters would have to fall back on plan B, but they never gave up. It took me years before I realized I had learned that, in part, from them. Yet, here I am. A divorced mom of a special needs child. I graduated from school in 2009 with a doctorate in naturopathic medicine. I’m getting ready to finish my prereqs while I study for my MCATs because I want to go to D.O. school. Not because I’m some great scholar, but because I’m determined to make it, even if I’m on plan E right now. So if she thinks watching Agent Gibbs (always 5 steps ahead of everyone) and watching Dr. House (the consummate problem solver) is what she likes, then I say she could have worse TV role models. But you’re right. Enzyte Bob is just creepy.
