In my nostalgia rewatching of The Cosby Show on Netflix streaming, I expected to relive a few things. Certain scenes and clips stand out in my memory, either from watching it on tape with my family or via reruns on WGN or Nick at Nite. I remember the Huxtable family on the stairs lip-synching to "Night and Day," I remember Christopher Plummer as a friend of Grandpa Russell, reciting Shakespeare for the family, and I remember Cliff Huxtable getting Theo to chant a song about the object of his affections, "Justine, Justine."
I'm happy to see that the show stands the test of time, and, like Sesame Street, there are guest stars that I recognize and appreciate now that I didn't at the time, like Lena Horn, Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Irwin, and my hero of heroes, Danny Kaye! What I was mildly surprised to find was the refrigerator and a desk lamp as the exact same model as the appliances in our home growing up. Heh, funny coincidence.
Then I noticed that the upbringing and personality of the youngest daughter closely resembled that of my own with I was her age, 5 or 6, possibly even 8 or so. Little bit of a tomboy, sometimes a smartypants, big on silliness, lovin' laughter, lots of imagination. Maybe all the way up through 10 or 12. I guess that's natural, as, watching the show regularly right at the age when one begins to develop their personality, one can't help but be influenced by it a little. Slightly. Okay, fine, I modeled my makeup as a human being on the character of Rudy Huxtable.
My brother definitely stole some playtime techniques from Bill Cosby, too. There's a good ten-minute section where Cliff Huxtable is entertaining a bunch of kids at a sleepover (and you know this wasn't scripted, Bill Cosby just played with some kids for ten minutes and it still resulted in more entertaining fare than most of the stuff on television today) by bouncing them one by one on his knee and seeing how long they can stay on. I KNOW my brother did this one with me, along with the Human Cannonball, although it's hard to believe every kid doesn't just reach this one on their own eventually, so the latter may not have been due to The Cosby Show's direct influence.
Now imagine my surprise to find that the word "zerbert" - which, for those of you not in the know, is a raspberry blown into the tummy or cheek of someone you love - actually originated and was coined on The Cosby Show, when Rudy wanted to spell by throwing out random strings of letters and Cliff Huxtable defined "zbrtt" by blasting fart noise against her face. I went through my entire life thinking that it was a common word that everyone knew.
But today, today while I had the show playing while cleaning up in the kitchen, came the ultimate shock. The mom on the show, Claire, uses her lawyering skills to get information out of her family members, stage mock trials when she thinks someone is lying - the usual TV mom stuff. But then one day, the family makes out a contract on a pad asking an elderly neighbor to agree to have young Rudy over every morning to make sure she takes her daily pill. The neighbor signs her name, and Rudy signs her name.
MY MOM STOLE HER PARENTING METHODS FROM THE COSBY SHOW.
To keep me from watching too much television, my mother drew up a contract for us to sign, stating that the television I was allowed to watch was the two hour afterschool Disney block on ABC or whatever it was. The block included Gummi Bears, Tale Spin, Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers, and Duck Tales. This contract enabled my mom to turn off the television when the allotted time was over with no protest from me, and apparently I held to it even when I was over at friends' houses - they'd say, "let's watch Flipper!" and I'd say, "I can't, it's not in my contract." It never even occurred to me to cheat.
At the time I just took it in stride as something my mother came up with, the same way she made up "Xiao Xiang Pi Jing (Little Rubber Band)" as a nickname for me, or invented "Eye Socket Stuffers" (putting my cheek in her eye socket because when I was a baby, my chipmunk cheeks perfectly fit the hollow). Moms do these things, you see.
But the contract? It's over. It's done. Her parenting techniques were stolen from Thursday night television. My upbringing was based on a show that went on for 8 seasons. My entire life is the result of the work of Dr. Cosby.
Actually, in retrospect it turns out I'm pretty okay with that.
1 comment:
love this. :)
Post a Comment