When I was around 12 or 13 years-old and babysitting back in the mid-’70s — yep, you read that right: I was babysitting other people’s children, on the regular, at age 12 with zero babysitting classes under my belt and no insight or info on childcare other than watching over my younger sibs when my parents were away — there was very little TV available.
Three channels. No video. No streaming. No VHS even.
And TV channels closed down by midnight … maybe 1 a.m. on Saturdays; or maybe it was by 11 pm on weekdays and 12 midnight on Saturday. IDK. It was around then.
I knew that I didn’t fully understand the shows on then — Monty Python and Saturday Night Live. They were adult-oriented. I wasn’t an adult. I got some of the humor. I missed a lot of it. And I never felt particularly comfortable watching these shows because, well, I was a tweenager and the content was created for adults. But these shows were all that was on then, and, of course, there were no VCRs, streaming services, cell phones or internet.
But these few shows were all that was keeping a kinda-stranger’s house filled with some sort of sound in what was otherwise deadly-sounding silence that, left unchecked, could have fear creeping in to my mind.
My 62-year-old self notes now that I find SNL incredibly well done (usually). They just keep keepin’ on … . The talent on that show is amazing. Happy 50th!
