Although I've expunged many seemingly significant events from my memory, including the birth of my sister, my first day of school and gross number of weddings, funerals and holiday gatherings, I remember Dec. 17, 1989.
My older brother and I were parked on the brown carpeting in the living room of our home in Warren. The small Zenith television was flickering on the right side of the room and my dad was behind us, watching with as much anticipation as a guy prepping for the work week can muster.
It was the night "The Simpsons" premiered, showing Homer's wayward attempt at saving Christmas only to bring home an abused greyhound they named Santa's Little Helper.
Detroit's Fox affiliate WKDB-50, then the bratty babysitting charge of legitimate evening programming, earned new respect among younger crowds. For years, jabs at the network sprinkled throughout the cartoon showed it was perfectly aware of its status far below ABC, CBS and NBC - and not only was it OK, it was great fodder for insults.
But that night before the turn of the decade bore a special place in American pop culture.
It created more than 10 years of my dad slipping into Homer impressions, the Bartman era that would provide my brother with painfully repetitive catch phrases and my lifelong concern that I might actually be Lisa Simpson.
D'oh.
The legacy of "The Simpsons" has followed this generation, regardless of whether wary moms with Marge-like attitudes approved. My ability to pick up on a C. Montgomery Burns quotation ("Mmm, excellent") or the opening chords of the show's Danny Elfman theme has helped to start more conversations than any of the networking skills I learned from my tuition-sucking classes.
In a packed room of college-age guys and gals split like a high-school homecoming dance, nothing breaks the ice like the murmur of a pubescent "I bent my wookie."
Whether emo, rocker, country star or rap aficionado, most people born before 1990 have a Simpsons vocabulary larger than they should admit. Sadly, I can't spout off most of the journalism history I spent months studying, but I know "The Simpsons" live on Evergreen Terrace, Elizabeth Taylor stood in for baby Maggie's first word ("Daddy") and Jub Jub is the name of Selma's iguana.
Indeed, our reality has morphed into theirs, but with actual hair and five fingers per hand.
Kwik-E-Mart is as much a household name as Quality Dairy. Itchy and Scratchy seem more familiar than Pokémon, Digimon or whatever cartoon the kiddies watch now. The animated performances by Smashing Pumpkins, The Ramones, Elvis Costello and Aerosmith seem to be proof of arrival as standing icons in the music world.
We were lucky to be born in an era of intelligent cartooning. Surely, a lot of my classmates back at Siersma Elementary School were ousted from their spot in front of the TV in favor of apparently more wholesome activities, but parental resolve wore down for most by the time the show was in reruns.
At very least, their popularity puts all three seasons released on DVD in the top 220 items purchased on Amazon.com.
My gut reaction is we should fear a generation that can list a television show in its top five uniting bonds, probably behind reaction to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the use of Internet at home. After all that talk about the MTV generation, cable wound up with a network scant on music and chock-full of inane competition, newlyweds and productions that lead only to a spike in nipple piercings, thanks to Janet Jackson. There's no cohesive thread for people who grew up with that, only hours spent wishing they were as cool as the people on "The Real World."
We never had to worry if we were that cool. Like "The Simpsons," we're fully aware of our lack of cool. We all have an inner Milhouse. That means we can safely poke fun at ourselves and others in our generation without crying into our diet sodas and light-carb drinks all night. It makes "The Simpsons" generation more amusing and less angst-ridden, despite what every statistic and news report would have you believe.
"The Simpsons" might be just a cartoon, but it's our reality TV.
D'oh.
Jamie Gumbrecht is a State News copy editor. E-mail her and ask her out for a squishy at gumbrec1@msu.edu
