What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

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When I was a kid, I wanted to be a Jedi.
Broomsticks hacked down to lightsaber length, me out in the yard defending the galaxy one swing at a time. I even convinced a few gullible friends I had “the Force.” That lasted until we were broke and couldn’t afford to go to the movies. Then reality slammed shut like a door, and I was trapped in the living room with MiMi, who wasn’t buying my space-wizard nonsense.

She only perked up when I mentioned Billy Dee Williams was in the films — Lando Calrissian with a Colt 45 smile. That got her attention. But her television kingdom was a dictatorship. For years, I was the remote — standing up, twisting dials, flipping channels on command. Then one day we got a “clicker,” and it was like technology had finally crawled into our living room just to save my legs.

So instead of saving the galaxy, I was watching Lawrence Welk with bubbles and bad tuxedos. Johnny Carson telling jokes I didn’t get. Tom Snyder talking late into the night with that weird, hypnotic voice. If I even thought about running in and out the doors, I got drafted into her soaps — General Hospital, Luke and Laura making love and betrayal look like Olympic events. Sometimes she’d hit me with Donahue, which I considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Still, if I played the good grandson, MiMi threw me a bone: The Midnight Special, late-night bands that felt like pure rebellion, or Benny Hill, which I didn’t really understand but knew was deliciously wrong. Benny led me to Monty Python’s Flying Circus — people with funny accents and even funnier logic. I didn’t know they were British. I just knew they made chaos look like art.

In between MiMi’s programming, the house ran on a steady diet of sitcoms that said more about America than any textbook: Good Times, All in the Family, The Jeffersons, Sanford & Son. Those shows were a crash course in race, class, family, and why the laugh track always sounded a little too eager. On the fringes came Chico and the Man, Barney Miller, WKRP in Cincinnati, Taxi, Rhoda, Alice, Lou Grant — each one another set of rules about how adults were supposed to live, fail, and get back up again.

Sometimes we veered rural with Hee Haw, Green Acres, Grand Ole Opry, or A Family Affair. They weren’t staples in the house, but they stuck, like songs you never wanted to learn but somehow knew all the words to.

But my true obsession was space. If MiMi let me touch the dial, I went searching for galaxies: Lost in Space, The Jetsons, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Trek. I never loved Star Trek the way I loved Star Wars, but Uhura’s poise and Spock’s cool logic dug under my skin. They felt like glimpses of who I might be if I could escape gravity — balanced, unshaken, speaking a language that made sense.

So yeah, I grew up with Jedi broomsticks and MiMi’s soap operas, Benny Hill’s chaos and Red Foxx’s side-eye, Donahue’s earnestness and Carson’s smirk. Somewhere in that mess was me, caught between galaxies and daytime TV, learning that the Force was real — but only if MiMi said so.

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Author’s Note:
Looking back, I think MiMi & crew were the original Jedi. I’m convinced all the Grandmas, Moms, and Aunts were the bones from which Jedi were born. Their Jedi Mind Tricks got medicine swallowed, chores finished, and strange vegetables eaten — usually under the illusion of baked goods or a shiny quarter. In other words: Grandmas invented Jedi Mind Tricks, and we never stood a chance.