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Hard to believe how much of my life has been lived alongside Springfield's most famous family.
1.The first episode of The Simpsons aired on December 17, 1989. I was finishing my last year of high school. It aired on a Sunday night, which was family dinner night over at my stepmother's house. My stepbrother and I begged our parents to let us watch the show, because we had heard so much about it.
Watching The Simpsons became part of our Sunday night ritual - for the next few months, anyway, after which my stepbrother and I left the state to attend college.
My father still tries to get a laugh out of me by saying "D'oh!" even though I know for a fact he hasn't seen a single episode of the show in at least the last ten years. But it's part of our shared family history, and he's a dad, and that's the kind of silly-ass lame thing that dads do, even when you're almost 40.
2.
At college, I didn't have a television of my own. Luckily there was a group of other like-minded students who all commandeered the television in the common room to watch the Fox Sunday night line-up. It was my first experience making friends as an "adult."
3.
In 1993 I visited Portland with a boyfriend, who I had met as part of that earlier Simpsons-watching crowd. We stopped at a Winchell's that was running a Simpsons promo. I bought a white plastic coffee cup with a Simpsons-pink handle and Homer's face on the side.
I still have that cup. As you can see from the picture, it's faded a bit over the years. It's one of my favorite possessions. I panicked just now when I couldn't find it! It had fallen behind another cup in the cupboard. I will drink from it this Sunday.
4.
In the late 1990s I tired of the show. Re-runs were literally aired 15 times a day in our market.
Even though I had stopped watching the show, I constantly listened to one of the soundtrack CDs which a friend had burned for me. ("Homer, that's your answer to everything, to move under the sea. It's not gonna happen!")
5.
After the September 11th attacks, I wanted nothing so much as a new episode of The Simpsons to take my mind off it. (I was skeptical of people's claims that "Humor is dead" and "We'll never laugh again.") The next episode aired on November 6th, a Treehouse of Horror episode. Some people criticized the show for leading off with a horror episode. But it was exactly what I had been craving.
6.
It is 2003 and I am living with another terrible boyfriend. This one is vehemently anti-TV, but I am sick, and it's Sunday night, and I want to watch the Simpsons, because dammit, that is what you do on Sunday nights.
I am pitiful enough to wear him down. He unearths our small television from the closet and I sit on the bed and watch The Simpsons, fuzzy from bad reception, and I am happy.
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