Fifty years ago

You know that my primary purpose in writing this blog is about exercise and motivating couch potatoes, but sometimes I just like to write some of my thoughts and opinions. I realize that an opinion is like a belly button, everyone has one. Today after I got home and wrote my post in this blog, I began cleaning my house. While I was doing this, I had the TV on, and it just happened to be on "Leave It to Beaver" which I never watch. This episode was from 1958, fifty years ago. I just kinda had the TV on and was doing my dusting and my attention was caught when I saw Wally and Beaver rolling on the floor of their bedroom fighting as brothers often do. We all know that June is the perfect mother, and Ward is the perfect father. So... I wanted to see how June handled this. She made the brothers sign a "friendship pact". Ward and June are alone at lunch and she is explaining how she has solved this problem of the two fighting brothers. One very profound comment that Ward made was, "June, you cannot force friendship on anyone." This definitely shows how very smart Ward is. Another very important point I noted was this- it was a pact and the brothers made great sacrifices to keep this pact. Granted, they did not want to get in trouble with their mother for being the one to break the pact, but nevertheless, they kept their pact. Both of them were offered other opportunities for fun that day that they both turned down- because... they made a pact. Now, when it was all said and done, the brothers were quite angry with one another for having to miss the fun they would have had. They are fighting again. June is taken aback that these brothers who had been getting along so well were now fighting up a storm. June had no idea that the boys were both invited to do something else, she is clueless. Ward knows all about it, and he gently tells June that the reason they were fighting was because Wally gave up going to a football game with a friend, and Beaver gave up going fishing with Gus, and they were both mad about it. At the end of the show, June was eating humble pie, and realizing that Ward was right and she was wrong about forcing her two sons to sign this pact. She even admitted to him that she was wrong. Now that was fifty years ago. Fast forward- a TV show now would in no way ever depict the father being right about anything. I mean.... he is stupid, fat, and slinks back, making no decision or comment. This is all left either to his wife, or probably more true to the kids. Today's Wally and Beaver would know much better than either one of the parents. They would be telling June, no way would they ever sign any pact. And... if they felt like they had to, in no way would they ever plan on honoring it. I know that fathers are not always right, and mothers are not always right, and sometimes kids do make lots of sense, but today's TV show would never have the father coming out being smart, confident, and sensible. Hmmm... who changed?