Thursday Thirteen #5: Favorite Old School T.V. Shows

Today is April 1st which means a couple things: (1) I get to talk to my little brother about all his April Fool's jokes later today, and (2) my month with no T.V. is officially over! I actually made it an entire month without watching the television once!! To be honest I wasn't sure I could, but it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. In fact, we realized we haven't really missed T.V. all that much and have decided to drop our cable, which will save us a bit of money each month. You may have noticed I've been blogging A LOT more this month. I have also been testing my camera's capabilities, planning for a new house, reading more for fun, downloading new great music (I think about 15 new songs in my repertoire) getting more creative with a couple secret (for now) projects, explored with new recipes and more difficult food, and Nick and I have talked more and played more games during the week than we used to just vegetating in front of the television in the evening.

Prior to March I thought I wasted most of my time watching lame shows, but as it turns out I was just wasting time, which can be done on the computer just as easily, which also means I didn't have this unbelievably productive month that I planned on having. Often such are the results of people that dream big, which is alright with me because I would absolutely call this month a success! For all you T.V. addicts out there, I recommend going cold turkey; it's not as bad as you think and you may discover some fun things you hadn't tried before!

Okay, to the purpose of this post: in honor of my victorious abstainment (totally a real made up word) from television last month, I thought I would journey to years of yore where my television addiction was at its peak! I'm talking like 1990's era, before I could drive or work or HS sports or Young Women or whatever. Here are just SOME of the old-school shows that I loved to watch and would probably still watch if I wasn't trying to quit in the best chronological order my memory could muster:


1. The Elephant Show: WAY SUPER old school, but somewhere in the cavernous expanse of my memory lies singing along with Sharon, Lois, and Brahm the opening song and of course, Skinamarinky Dinky Dink.



2. Eureeka's Castle: We didn't have this channel growing up, but I watched this show just about everyday when I went to get babysat at Charlene's house (that was the name of my friend, but I can't remember her last name or her parents' names). No story here, just a great show!



3. Rin Tin Tin: K-9 Cop: I honestly don't know how old I was when I started watching this show, but we all LOVED it in my house! And my mind is completely baffled that the actual title of this show is Katts & Dog...so confused.


4. Muppet Babies: Funny story alert! So I was ragging on Nick for claiming to have never seen this show, and started singing the song to jog his memory. After the first line or so I could only remember the tune. Well, Nick came in and sang THE ENTIRE REST OF THE SONG!! I was so amused by his memory and then wondered why we both can remember the theme song to Muppet Babies but can't remember "many cheerful facts of the square of the hypotenuse"...or other more useful things than this theme song. Crazy stuff! 


5. Full House: I remember taping (on VHS, kids) the finale episodes where Michelle loses her memory by falling off a horse. It's pretty sick how much I loved that show.


6. Barney and Friends/Lamb Chops Play-Along: I am including these together because as far as I was concerned they were a package deal since the one played right after the other. Hush Puppy was my favorite on LCPA, and I totally had a Barney watch and alarm clock. When the kids at school would jump on the purple tiles in the lunch line pretending the tiles were Barney I would be sad, but join in, so no one would suspect a secret obsession with the lovable purple dinosaur. My name is Rachel, and I am a former closet Barney lover. I attribute this to self-esteem issues.



7. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?: I admit that the real reason I watched this show was to listen to Rockapella sing the introduction. And so begins my love of A Capella music. Learning geography was fun too, as was the video game I played in the library on occasion. The entire theme song is not in this video, but we're highlighting the show, not the music that made it great.


8. Chip n' Dales Rescue Rangers: I think this was technically my sister Jen's favorite show, but I loved it too! You may be surprised to know that Dale was my favorite character on the show, being the prankster he is! For my audition to work at Cold Stone I sang the intro to this song. It must have been a big hit!



9. Wishbone: On at 4pm on PBS, that's how I know for sure it was one of my favorites! What's the story Wishbone?


10. Lois and Clark, The New Adventures of Superman: My whole family watched this on Sunday nights (I think) and we had just about every episode taped on VHS. My guess is that they are somewhere stored away in my parents' home...thank goodness for DVRs!


11. Recess/Bonkers/PepperAnn/Dark Wing Duck: I group these all together because more or less they were all shows I liked to watch when I got home from school. Recess was my favorite, so here's a bit of that. T.J. was my hero, but Spinelli was who I could relate to most. I totally wanted a beanie just like hers!


12. Home Improvement: So get this, the guy I am going to be doing a summer internship with, his name is TIM TAYLOR!! Only in my home do I call him "Tim the Tool Man," because that's just not as fun in person. JTT was totally my first teenage heartthrob!


13. Boy Meets World: I know that some, if not all of you, loved this show! I loved it much less when Eric began being all slapstick stupid and Cory and Topanga were all about making babies, but in the 90's this show was so hot! This was my favorite episode. Here is part 1, the other parts can be found on YouTube if you're hard up for quality entertainment.


Wow! That was a lot of work to dig those up! But I hope you enjoyed going through some memories with me. What shows did you like as a kid that I may have neglected to mention or simply did not post because of the constraints of my series title?