Carol Kroll

A pony ride to the 1970’s

I haven’t had too much to report on lately. Sort of been keeping to myself again over here.

Fall is here and even though I don’t like to admit it to myself—-I am trying to fight off the urge to shut down and hibernate. And for some reason “hunger” comes with the colder weather and more darkness. Why is that? and why is it ALWAYS the heavy foods I have done so well to eat in moderation? Why can’t they scream: YUM! CARROT STICKS!

Instead of: Huge Block of Expensive Imported Creamy Cheeeeese…

(?)

Why can’t it look like this in my head?

So I have been ramping up the Netflix again, but not to be a vegetable and give into the hunger inducing sedentary demons of fall and winter in Wisconsin and lay on the couch while watching my Netflix TV show finds…

No! I have been using it to get old episodes of TV shows I love to watch so I can be a trained pony on the treadmill! Like those pony rides who offer broken willed animals, caring less that there are screaming kids on their backs and they have to walk in a perpetual circle all their live long days?

Much like that, I put in the show of my choice and away I go. Like a baby with a pacifier. How American of me, but oh well. Whatever works at this point.

This week? The 1972-1978 sitcom Bob Newhart! Oh MY I love that show.

It should surprise nobody, that I adore a show about a psychologist. A fondness that started when the show was on when I was 5 and could hear it down the hallway while I was supposed to be asleep.

In my teen years, I also used to have reruns of it on Milwaukee’s channel 18 while I hid out in my room and “made my magic” during high school. I know, I was supposed to be dating and going to the mall, but remember, I was a recluse nerd. A tradition I intend on carrying on right to my grave.

The clothes on this show are to DIE for! I’m thinking of hooking myself up with some of these sweet gems someday. The patterns are outrageously ME. And I have since changed my viewpoint on Polyester. And wide collars.

But not my viewpoint on the environment. Nope! That has been a constant since 1977.

Curious: What, with all this “green” talk lately in the news, it makes one wonder if we had kept up with the energy and environmental crisis my generation was learning about in grade school (you know BACK IN NINETEEN SEVENTY SEVEN ) where would we be now? The crying Indian had such high hopes for us. He was so good at getting the Gen Xr’s attention, too. Ask anyone in their 30’s about the crying Indian and they’ll tell you. So what happened grownups in 1977 and beyond?

Oh that commercial depressed the living crap out of me every time I saw it. Now that I’m 36 and fully realize we actually DID abandon the energy and environmental crisis for decades on end, not caring about the sad Indian’s plea, it makes me even more depressed and cynical about the world. The anxiousness about our current election aids in that arena as well. Hopefully, for once in our Gen X’r lives, there will be a delightful happy ending full of change and hope, and not more of the same letdown of pending Armageddon.

There’s a reason we coined the term “whatever” .