.... You Take the Good, You Take the Bad.....

you take 'em both and there you have.... The Facts of Life.

I have a weakness for nostalgia. Especially the pop culture sort... Love's Baby Soft perfume, Maybelline's kissing potion lip gloss, Jean Nate bath splash and, heck, I still wear my Dr. Scholls.... TV Land is usually enough to keep me satisfied with periodic doses of TV shows I'd nearly forgotten.... Night Court, Wings, Three's Company and an occasional Little House on the Prairie. But this week I stumbled upon seasons one and two of Facts of Life on DVD at the library. Now normally, this show wouldn't be all that exciting to me, but season one and two are the seasons that linger back, back, way back in the recesses of my memory, so much so that I was stunned to see Molly Ringwald in all her ten-year-old glory playing the role of Molly Parker (at least for season one) and I've only watched 1/2 of the first season so far. The theme song is different, there's a headmaster called Mr. Bradley and a bunch of girls that only stuck around until about three episodes into season three. Still, this is the show I remember, as it rushes back to me with startling clarity. Tootie on her roller skates, Blair being Blair, Natalie cracking jokes, and pretty much everyone else running around in the skimpiest gym shorts ever worrying about their IQ scores, and generally being after-school special sweet to each other.

The highlight, though, was in episode five of season one "Career Day" when the girls all discussed their future goals and Molly stood up with her sad little four stringed guitar and declared with enthusiasm... "I want to be the Joan Baez of the 80's. Listen (strum, strum):

The skies are junky
The lakes are chunky
The oceans are gunky
I feel like a lab monkey
Stop grossing up America,
you turkeys!"

Update: After finishing season one I had another surprise... Helen Hunt.... In episode 13, she plays a pot smoking student who is part of "The Group" that Sue Ann and Blair want to join. She also memorably appeared as a young woman who, while on LSD, jumps out of a second story window in a 1982 after school special called Desperate Lives or so it says on Wikipedia.

After soaking in season one I feel as though I am ready to face any issue: divorce, premarital sex, flash floods, crushes on older men, pot smoking, crash dieting, unhealthy competition, IQ tests, floozy mothers, adoption, tomboy teasing, future career goals, plagiarism, stereotyping, and gambling.