Maybe the world is blind, or just a little unkind – don’t know…
Seems you can’t be sure of anything anymore – although…
You may be lonely and then one day you’re smiling again
Every time I turn around….
It came on, if faltering memory serves, early on a Sunday night – 7 PM I believe – that dreaded do-or-die time for homework left all weekend (and who didn’t leave homework all weekend?) My brother and I would sit in the family room and watch it, pretending that we didn’t like it, but glued to the set week after week. Maybe we only watched it for the theme song – so many television shows of my childhood only mattered for their theme songs – or maybe we did it for something more. The point is, we sat there watching ‘Punky Brewster’ and witnessing Soleil Moon-Frye strut herself before she went and grew big boobs, trying to draw out the last bit of Sunday for as long as we could, holding onto the weekend in an always-losing effort.
Sometimes I still feel that way, remembering the sad moping that accompanied Sunday nights during the school year. The dull dread of another Monday, the mental tussle of whether it would be better to go to sleep and forget about it, or try to stay up because once you went to sleep it would be Monday the next waking moment. The little worries of a kid don’t always dissipate as an adult; they usually get a lot worse.
But for this Sunday night, I’m relatively calm, bemused by this song, tickled by this video, and made happy by this memory.
(PS – Did you know that Punky’s real name was ‘Penelope’? I just found that out tonight. It changes everything. I once had an octopus named Penelope… She was a gift.)
