TV Memories

I had to be at work by eight am today, but I still had time to watch an episode of The Mod Squad before work.  Probably since I washed my hair yesterday -- I wore my purple shower cap this morning, and saved myself nearly an hour.

I haven't watched Mod Squad before this, I only know of its existence from a short period in my childhood when we were watching the Brady Bunch on Friday nights, and we would see ads for it.  I was in maybe the second grade.  Although as I think back to that time period, I realize that I am conflating it with a show called -- I think -- Room 222, which was about high school, or maybe college.  They occupy the same drawer in my memory chest of drawers, since they both had similar characters, clothes, colors, music and intros.  Hawaii Five-O is in that same drawer.  Lots of long straight hair for girls, strange sideways partings for guys, lots of "solid" and "square" and "Daddy-O," lots of mini dresses and Nehru jackets.  I don't think I actually saw any of The Mod Squad,  back in those days -- never saw any of Room  222, either, except for its into -- it must have followed a show that we were watching -- but I can almost hear the theme song from Room 222 playing in my inner ear.   Guitars and flute!

In any case, I was unpleasantly surprised, this morning, while watching this cutting-edge drama, showing young and with-it people, both black and white, male and female, very forward-thinking -- to hear the young female lead say, when asked if she would like Chinese food, "Ah, so!" in a ridiculously phony Chinese accent, protruding her teeth like a Japanese general in WWII propaganda. 

It is always surprising -- jarring, really -- to see the places where people's awareness has not yet reached.  You have to wonder --what's mine going to turn out to be? 

I was thinking this same thought just recently, while re-reading a paper I wrote for Humanities class at Warner Pacific -- this is back in the mid-nineties sometime -- about philosophers attempting to break down their awareness of the world to its very basic state.  "I think, therefore I am," type of thing.  And still being unaware that they were discriminating completely against women.  What must that degree of blindness be like?  What is it going to be, for me?  Scary.