the tindog coffeehouse

There was a lengthy debate a few days ago on USA Today’s PopCandy blog about the all-time worst sitcoms. Most of the shows mentioned (Mr. Belvedere, Small Wonder, My Two Dads, etc.) were shows from the ’80s and early ’90s. Very few readers mentioned shows from the ’60s or ’70s, likely because those were before their time.

As a child of the ’80s, I grew up on shows like Happy Days, Scooby-Doo, The Dukes of Hazzard, and WKRP in Cincinnati, as well as classics such as The Brady Bunch, Gilligan’s Island, and The Munsters. (Yes, I watched entirely too much TV growing up.) I played with GI Joe and Star Wars toys but never made it very far in Pac-Man or Donkey Kong. I rode my Big Wheel up and down the block without adult supervision and caught horny toads in the vacant lot next door.

Now that I’m a father, I’ve come to the realization that my daughters won’t share many of these same memories. They have no idea who the Fonz is or what New Coke tastes like. They’ve never ridden in the wayback of a station wagon, recorded anything to a cassette tape, or changed channels with a pair of pliers because the knob broke off, and they don’t care.

So what things will they be nostalgic for when they’re parents? Hanna Montana? High School Musical? Shrek? Will they talk about the first time they broke 200 on Wii Bowling or laugh about how slow the Internet was? Will they tell their kids about growing up when people still used gas in their cars and it was only $4 a gallon?

And I wonder: Did my dad ever feel this way because I don’t know the words to the Davy Crockett theme, can’t recite any of the Smothers Brothers routines, and don’t have any interest in baseball trading cards?