Return of A Childhood Staple

Tonight, the television series Dallas returns. For me, this series brings back a lot of good memories.

Mainly of my aunt, who was a die-hard fan of both Dallas and Dynasty, as well as Star Trek. If you didn’t want to experience an early death, you never touched the VCR on the nights that these shows came on.

I wasn’t allowed to watch television at home, but luckily, my aunt ended up having two little boys right at the time I became old enough to babysit, and so I ended up spending a lot of time with my aunt, uncle, and two little cousins….. And HBO, Dallas, Dynasty, Star Trek, and my favorite, Battlestar Galactica.  Of course, Battlestar Galactica was in reruns by that time, but for me, I was being introduced to the miracle of science fiction for the first time.

We’d get all of our drinks and snacks ready, and line up in front of the old stand-alone television set, the VCR loudly humming and clicking as it began recording, and the strum of excitement would echo the Dallas instantly recognizable opening theme song. And no one would dare speak until the commercials, mainly because my aunt would have flipped out, but also because the show moved quickly, and you either kept up, or you were going to be lost until you re-watched the tape 14 times over the next week in preparation for following week’s episode.

Yesterday, while filling out job applications on-line, I watched old reruns of Dallas from the ’80’s on my TNT On-Demand channel. And wow, if I didn’t remember most of what was going on back then! I’m guessing they were hitting just the important parts of the series so we’d be somewhat familiar with what was going on tonight when the characters all return to our lives. The episodes weren’t in order, or even set in the same seasons. I paused the action many times to take phone calls or to scan in a written application and send it over the net to an awaiting friend. Then, I set my guide to switch to the channel instantly whenever the new shows came on tonight, set the DVR in the living room to record that show and Breaking Bad and Suits when they come back on, and then smiled a little, thinking about my aunt’s 4 million VCR tapes that she meticulously preserved her favorite shows on. They used to take up an entire book-case along one whole wall.

I’ll bet she’s preparing for the return by having a party! I wonder if she’ll record them on RW-DVD‘s or just order the boxed set when they come out? Man, has technology changed since then or what?!

On another note, Chef is back, probably setting a world record in the Shortest Separation Ever category, so we’ll see how all of this goes. Thank you all for the prayers, and please keep them coming.

— Bird