Most sitcoms never make it to the television and even fewer ever become anything worth watching. Successful sitcoms always go through growing pains and every few years, the actors renegotiate because a billion dollars an episode just doesn’t buy enough drugs and alcohol.
This brings me back to The Simpsons. I can’t imagine them asking for more money; it’s just silly. Bart is in third grade; Lisa seems beyond the dough and probably donates what she gets now and Maggie hasn’t spoken yet even though she’s older than Facebook. Homer probably thinks he’s on Big Brother and Marge, well Marge can’t be that smart because even in this divorce laden society, she’s still married to Homer.
One of the perks of being on the cast of a cartoon sitcom is you’re in a perpetual fountain of youth. The people from Cocoon waited until they were seniors to freeze time but what if you could be ten years old forever? Okay maybe not ten but twenty-five? By then, you’re out of college and acne is a painful joke. The money starts to come in, and you have your first apartment. You can drink your body weight in alcohol and still make it to work in the morning.
Being in a cartoon sitcom has its perks if you’re Lisa Simpson or Meg Griffin and even Beavis. Archie and Veronica had it right with living forever as a teenager in the 1940s. But what about Homer and Mr. Weatherby? I’d hate to be fat and bald and somewhat clueless forever.
Imagine being frozen in time in that week just after Christmas when you’re ten pounds heavier than during bikini season and you’re puking your guts out with the flu. Or at the awkward Peter Brady age when the Bradys did the “When it’s time to change” record. Even that last year before you moved out of your parent’s house would be living hell; that was when your mom beat on your door every Sunday at 6am for church after you had arrived home at 5:55am, smelling of Budweiser and Marlboros.
Sure it’s no fun to be Punky Brewster when you’re not so punky anymore or being a thirty year old Garry Coleman and still saying “Whatchu talkin bout Willis?”; but it’s better than being Elmer Fudd just after you shoot yourself in the face or Charlie Brown when you perpetually miss that football like the Sisyphus of sports.
We’ve all had those awkward times but we’ve moved past them, to new states of awkwardness. I wouldn’t mind being the same age for a few years but I’d have to pick the years and I wouldn’t want to stay there forever. The good times have only been in stretches of a few months.
It would be great to be young all the time but after a while, I’d feel like I’m in a rut which is best described as a grave with the ends kicked out. Bart has it good when he’s watching Itchy and Scratchy but how about when he’s shoved in the garbage can and kicked down the hill every week? At some point, I’d like to move on and be kickee.
Life should be like my DVD player; there would be a pause for Saturday night, a fast forward for Monday morning and an eject button for when you’re 40, driving a Dodge Dart and earning minimum wage.
There were certain milestones I looked forward to but eighteen was the age I dreaded most. You’re old enough for the law to consider you an adult and you have to sign up for the draft, but you can’t legally drink a beer. I imagine myself bullet strewn and gasping for my last breath on the battlefield; my last request would be for a beer and I’d get asked for I.D.
I’ve been reading Beetle Bailey for twenty years and he’s been a private in the Army for at least that long. Imagine getting yelled at by Sarge for eternity? I guess it wouldn’t be that bad and it’s a funny thing too; in all that time, he hasn’t spent one minute knee deep in sand somewhere in the Middle East yet I get caught in gang crossfire when I walk out the front door in the morning.
Staying the same age might be great but if we never got older, neither would those around us. We’d be in that annoying place where we have the responsibilities of adults, yet our parents would have us frozen in time when we were three years old and we peed on their leg.
If I could live forever at 16 when I got my first girlfriend, or at 21 when I got to legally drink or in that week before I realized I didn’t know it all. Or ten minutes after I won my first middle school fight when my friends were chanting “Rocky.” I’d even take that three seconds after I inched over the crest of the biggest hill on the roller coaster, which also happened to be the five seconds before I puked.
Being in a perpetual fountain of youth would mean a wrinkle free face, no extra weight around my mid-section and that I’d get to date forever without getting married. It would also mean that I’d never finish writing this column and my fingers are starting to get tired.
