This post is going to be long. It’s going to be detailed.
But typing it out here has got to be less expensive than beating the ear off my therapist for an hour while lying uncomfortably on her mohair couch.
Or something like that.
Anyway.
This is a true story. (Are you kidding? I couldn’t make this crap up!)
Raise your hand if you were a child of the 90s!
Keep that hand up high if you spent just about every Friday night watching the TGIF lineup on ABC. *Waves hands wildly in the air* So if your hand is up you should be familiar with titles such as: Full House, Just the 10 of Us, Going Places, Family Matters, Step by Step and of course, Perfect Strangers.
TGIF was big in our house. Big. My sister and I loved Full House the most, followed closely by Family Matters and Step by Step. Friday nights meant school was over for the week, takeout cheesesteaks for dinner were a good possibility and a night of sensible, wholesome television programming was imminent.
There’s just one little part that I left out: my mom, God rest her soul, had a borderline worrisome fanatical obsession with the show Perfect Strangers.
Perfect Strangers. Do you remember it? Let me jog your memory. Here are some keywords: Balki, Cousin Larry, Mypos, Chicago, festive vests, sheep named Dimitri, Dance of Joy, tassels (the non-booby variety), Chicago Chronicle.
A true American sitcom, Perfect Strangers ran for eight seasons on ABC from 1986 through 1993. It starred Bronson Pinchot as Balki Bartokomous, an immigrant sheepherder from the fictitious Eastern European island of Mypos . Mark Linn-Baker played Balki’s midwestern cousin, Larry Appleton. Do you remember it now?
The theme song went a little like this:
So my dear mother, at some point in the 80s, got it into her head that this show was the best entertainment to hit the airwaves in quite some time. And as my sister, brother and I were all extremely impressionable and thought that everything she did was, like, AWESOME, we had no choice but to grow up under the guise of Balki and cousin Larry.
In no time at all, it became painfully obvious that we were a little different.
While my friends were collecting New Kids on the Block trading cards, I had binders that proudly displayed my collection of TGIF themed trading cards.
Photo Credit
While my friends were drawing pictures for their parents depicting flowers, rainbows, puppies and waterfalls, I was drawing intricate maps of fictional theme parks including Six Flags Over Mypos. Sure, it wasn’t drawn to scale, but I never said I was perfect.
While my friends were playing baseball, kickball or holding cutthroat Skip-It tournaments during recess, I was perfecting my Dance of Joy.
While my friends baked chocolate chip cookies with their moms, I wanted to know why we couldn’t bake Bibbi-Babkas.
And last, but certainly oh-not-so-very least, while other friends were practicing super cool dances including, but not limited to, the Electric Slide, Cotton Eye Joe and the line dance that accompanied Achy Breaky Heart, I was training my brother as he perfected the Fresh Young Balki B rap/dance.
After reviewing all of this evidence I suppose it was inevitable that Balki and his antics would have some sort of impact on my life. In fact, it was pretty much a given. But despite the show’s definite cheese factor and the overwhelming urge it put forth to set sail on a Mediterranean cruise while herding sheep, I can’t deny that it was a fun, albeit quirky, childhood.
And now here we are, a jaw-dropping 19 years since the final episode of Perfect Strangers aired in 1993 (Good GOD – there is NO WAY I am that freaking old!). I have told myself that Perfect Strangers was a thing of the past, a distant memory.
So then how do you explain the fact that I walked into IKEA a couple of months ago and instead of seeing a festive couch-enhancing decorative pillow collection… I saw pillows that had clearly been made from scraps of Balki’s old Myposian vests.
I mean, am I right or am I right?
This post is very lovingly dedicated to my mom, her P.S. partner in crime, El Kaye and to my fellow blogger friend, Steph, who provided an alarming amount of encouragement to write this post and face my Myposian childhood.
p.s. Feeling the need to watch Perfect Strangers? You can grab Seasons 1 and 2 of Perfect Strangers for $16.75 on Amazon. I may or may not have just purchased one for myself.