FLASHBACK FIVE FOR FRIDAY! 5 reasons I won't be a TV mom.

Good afternoon everyone!  I'm running way behind in my day thanks to some self inflicted drama at work. and yes, it is not a work day for me, but hey, why wouldn't we just call Sarah at home and bring the drama to her?

Anyway, below is a five for Friday I wrote in the early days of the blog. Enjoy!




My mother often tells the story of the very first TV they ever got.  They put the the TV on the table, turned it on, and waited for it to warm up.  As the tubes warmed and began to lighten the black screen, the black, gray, and white image of a cartoon pig putting on a girdle opened up before them.  My grandmother, shocked at the image, immediately turned off the TV and said, "If that's the sort of rubbish that's going to be, we don't need a TV."

I often wonder what my grandmother would make of Cialis commercials...much less shows like Teen Mom.

The one constant, I think, over the decades since TV first entered our living rooms, is the TV mom.  Each generation of viewers had their own TV interpretation of a mom.  Some generations had several, conflicting images.  TV moms have varied wildly from each other over the decades, but even as they vary, one thing remains constant for each of them:  I will probably never measure up to TV moms.

So today I give you five reasons why I am not TV mom material.

5)  Claire Huxtable

Raising five children, spanning in age nearly 20 years, and four of them girls?  Being a lawyer is just a survival tactic, given the borderline illegal activity some of those kids dabbled in.  (Vanessa and her trip to see "The Wretched" goes down as my all time favorite TV parenting moment, bar none.)  I am not a lawyer, so I can clearly not manage a household of that many girls.  Although, being married to the Jell-o pudding pop guy would have its benefits.

4)  June Cleaver

Dresses, stockings, and pearls every day?  Not even on a Sunday when I have to stand in front of church and sing.

The only mom of two on this list, June seemed to be perfect.  Perfect house, perfect clothes, semi perfect kids...who made terrible choices when it came to friends.  Seriously, was peer pressure not a thing in the 50's?  If my kids brought home someone named Stinky...or Eddie Haskel...I would sit them down and discuss the wisdom of choosing good friends.  June, however, was a head of her time when it came to the time honored mothering tradition of taking pills to get through the day.  Don't believe me?  Okay, how do you explain the fact that she NEVER RAISED HER VOICE?  Valium is the only answer possible.  She wore stockings every day and never raised her voice.  Yep, Valium.

3)  Shirley Partridge.

As much as I would LOVE to add "Rock Star Matriarch"  to my resume, it's highly unlikely.  Rock star stuff aside, Shirley might have been the closest to REAL a TV mom was going to get in the late 60's and early 70's.  She was often frazzled, raising multiple teens on her own, so who could blame her for putting out once in a while for Reuben Kinkaid, just so they could get a better gig?  (What...she didn't?  Are you sure?)  I do have to take points off, however, for the child switching incident that she didn't seem to notice.  I mean, sure, babies get switched all the time.  But someone stole Chris, her original drummer, and replaced him with some other kid...and she never seemed to notice!

2)  Carole Brady

Often spoken of in the same breath as Shirley Partridge, Carole Brady is more original than we might think.  Sure, she's the epic picture of motherhood from the 70's.  How cool was she, mothering a blended family of six kids?  Very ahead of her time, right?  Oh sure, and she married a gay guy, VERY hip.  She ruled the roost of six kid and a dog in a house that had, for all we know, one bathroom and no working toilet.  How did she do it and still look so great?  One word:  Alice.

1)  Marie Barone

It's a nosy mother, it's an overbearing wife, it's MARIE.  Able to leap all the boundaries of etiquette in a single meal, nosier than a speeding gossip columnist, it's MARIE  Well...while I have a feeling I'd fall into Marie's pattern of smothering love all too easily, two things keep me from it:  I can't abide large amounts of opera, and I do not cook.  (Oh, and yes, she's the other mom of two on the list...but she managed 3 grandchildren...and let's be honest...Frank was a bigger child than all of them.)

So there...five reasons I'll never be a TV mom.