After-School Routine featuring Carol Burnett

The 1970’s hit sketch-comedy television series, The Carol Burnett Show, is inadvertently responsible for enabling my childhood feelings of isolation and social alienation. While my friends were obsessing over TV shows like Spongebob or Wizards of Waverly Place, I chose to devote my spare time to the intellectually-stimulating likes of 1970’s TV reruns my parents had grown up with. I knew that my personal favorite, The Carol Burnett Show, was not common or even known amongst my friends. I mean, the popular television of the 1970’s was hardly relevant to a bunch of children living in 2008. And so, I didn’t feel the need to discuss it with said friends; it was my own special interest anyways. An interest that would equip me with the intellectual capital that was so heavily sought after as a six year old per my iconic recess therapy sessions.

While wasting my precious youth away on an old TV show had its disadvantages, it had its perks on the playground. There, I showed an entirely different side of myself. I gave a masterclass in spunk, extraversion, and wit — not at all in keeping with my lonely afternoons spent with Carol Burnett. During recess, my friends and I would joyfully rally around the wooden playground together, its decaying and rotting oak structure crumbling before our eyes. But that was moot to us; we were blissfully enjoying the present. Our kingdom of timber had ample hiding spots and adequate nooks and crannies, perfect for us ravenous 1st graders to exploit. In particular, I found the underground bunker in the central playground was the prime spot for my school-famous gossiping/therapy sessions.

For whatever reason, my fellow peers felt I was a trustworthy source for their deepest, darkest secrets. (Dark secrets meaning that Anna had a crush on Bryce and that one time, Lizzie saw Jack M. pick his nose and wipe it under his seat, and so on and so forth…Our budding minds were not quite as twisted as we imagined.) Still, we had some hard truths to tell and those came out in the form of ten minute appointment slots with me, Mary Grace, chief therapist and gossip source of the first grade class.

Of course, a therapist was a foreign concept to my juvenile brain, but my so-called “old soul” seemed to understand the basic mechanisms: hold strong eye contact, nod, give a couple “mhm”’s in agreement, and ask them how they felt. One by one, my classmates would shuffle into my “office” to expose and flesh out their secrets. Looking back, I think I relished a little too much in the power of being the sole confidant to Ms. Clausen’s thirty-something students. I blame that on my birth order (youngest child, if it wasn’t already obvious) and my elder sisters’ lack of tact in front of their six year old sister.

Being the youngest of four girls with big mouths, I ended up doing a lot of listening and heard a lot I shouldn’t have. My family-appointed label of “precocious” was simply the product of hearing a lot of teenage drama and trying hard to keep up with the emotional undercurrents of it all. However, in turn, I garnered a lot of useful knowledge that aided my peers in their journeys towards pubescence and self-exploration. For example, I informed several girls of the ins and outs of periods and even successfully started and spread the rumor that sex was when two naked people of the opposite sex hugged. I really had the first grade class in a chokehold with that one.

I think in all transparency though that the so-called “expert advice” I swiftly dispersed was not just a result of my sibling eavesdropping but rather, the product of my nearly daily consumption of The Carol Burnett Show. I vividly recall my after-school routine while I was in elementary school went something like this:

1. Come home
2. Change out of my school uniform into my Justice clothes
3. Get the throw up/popcorn bowl from the kitchen cabinet
4. Mix together an assortment of Orville Redenbacher microwave-popcorn and M&M’s
5. Waddle downstairs into the basement to the big TV to watch The Carol Burnett Show

My parents and sisters would chuckle in unison as they observed me do my routine. I wouldn’t utter a single word too, just quietly and solemnly gather my supplies as though I were performing a sacred ritual. It makes me laugh now too, envisioning my younger self alone in the basement, smothered in blankets, just me and my popcorn bowl and Carol Burnett against the world. I sifted between a variety of retro TV shows — The Carol Burnett Show, Monk, M.A.S.H., Bewitched, and a variety of others — but I mainly stuck with my ol’ gal Carol. My parents always joked that she and I had some sort of spiritual connection because we shared a birthday. I guess the universe’s way of signaling our intrinsic understanding of one another, or in actuality, my understanding of her.

My parasocial relationship with comedian extraordinaire Carol Burnett was a big comfort to me as a child. I was a particularly depressed and anxious kid, drained easily by the social and academic stressors of my life, even at the ripe age of six. I’m still shocked and amused by my parents’ unquestioning approval of my after-school activities, but I think they saw how much the fever dream of escapism that is The Carol Burnett Show helped me. My time with Carol and her gang helped me make sense of myself and gave me a laugh while at it. Additionally, the show shaped a large part of my personality and understanding of the world. The intricacies of male-female dynamics, social and class structures, political and historical events, were all laid out before me — in the context of 1970’s America that is. The dated nature of the shows I watched most certainly stunted and misled my younger self. It gave me the humor and pop culture knowledge of a baby boomer, but that made for good rapport with my mom’s friends from church — referencing a skit or joke from one of Carol’s episodes always guaranteed a laugh.

But on a more introspective note, watching shows such as these gave me a false sense of maturity. I carried this naive and misconstrued belief that I somehow had this broader understanding of life simply because I was absorbing media made decades ago for people long gone. My intense fixation with The Carol Burnett Show kept me isolated and a little behind in some ways. It allotted me some much needed time to unwind, but it also put me at a distance from my peers and their current, modern interests–as well as the typical childhood activities. Instead of scoring goals on the soccer field during practice or pirouetting at the dance studio with my friends during rehearsal, I found my evenings spent in a dank basement with nothing but the sounds of laugh tracks and the heater to cheer me on. Instead of playing with the newest Lego set or drawing in a coloring book, I had my eyes glued to a screen of antiquated set designs and glittering, feathered jumpsuits. And even in the midst of those sessions in the bunker with my friends, the one time I was really participating in something with my peers, I felt isolated there too. All that lay in those sessions was the lingering voice of Carol, bubbling in my brain effervescently. It felt like a comfort at the time, a means to bridge the gap between my friends and I by providing them with something useful. Much to my dismay, it only furthered the depths of that chasm. I guess all childhood media has the power to cause more harm than good, but at least mine has made for great dinner party conversation thus far.