The Wonder Years!!

No, I’m not talking about that special period in my life. I’m talking about one of my favourite T.V, shows – The Wonder Years. The other one of course is’ Friends’. ‘Friends’ is one of those serials that made slapstick comedy really popular among people. It redefined cool. 6 people, 6 different personalities, and how crazy life can be is what this serial is about. But still you can’t really connect to a serial like ‘Friends’. After all we don’t come up with wisecracks every other word we speak a la Chandler Bing. Being stupid can be tough when u got someone like Joey. This is a great show, but these are not real people. That’s where ‘The Wonder Years’ is so different from ‘Friends’. These are real people and if you’ve had a fairly normal childhood, you’d probably be able to relate to just about everything in the serial. Its one of those perfect serials on adolescence and growing up. The show transports you to another world – the world of Kevin, Winnie, Paul. The world of puppy love, crushes, friendships, competition, silly quarrels, innocence, etc. The world where everything was so simple.

Anyway, I’ve been searching for episodes of this show on the Internet for a long time now. And finally I hit upon one of the episodes – ‘The Graduation’. For people who have not watched Friends before (shame on you), this is a story of a few friends in junior school, their life, love and their experiences of growing up. This episode is about the graduation day when they are to graduate to high school. It reminded me of so many things from my own life, that I had long forgotten. It reminded me of my last day at school. While on the one hand you were moving on to do (or at least you were supposed to) bigger things in life, on the other hand you were leaving behind all you friends, your teachers, you memories behind. And for me it was more of the latter. While all of us were trying to make it look like we were happy that we were done with school, deep within I guess there was this sadness knowing that we’ll probably never see a lot people again, never get to share our lunches, bunk classes, cycle home with friends, shout for a ‘free period’, cycle down to your friends, come back home by 4 and watch TV. No more excuses for your mistakes. Life sure was moving on, and very suddenly.

Anyway, I’ll leave you with a few dialogues from this episode,

- “It was time to move on. Time to bid goodbye to old times.”

- “I didn’t feel like graduating. I felt more like shooting hoops.”

- “I went for a walk. Traveled streets I’d long known, long ago, when life was simple.”

- “I guess that’s when I knew, the old days were gone. Things had changed and they were never going to be the same again.”

- “The world I knew had changed.”

- “The future is rushing at us. And we in turn stand ready. Therefore as we stand here at the end of one journey and the beginning of another, lets make a bond. To never forget our time at our junior high. And to never forget the friends we made here.

- The past is kind of a blur. What I remember is green yards, sprinklers, the smell of backyard rose…..”


I guess I was after all talking about that special period of my life.