Indeed I Was “Saved By The Bell”

As a child I watched many shows and most about teenagers struggling with teachers, relationships, bullies, and parents. There was Family Matters, Full House, Step By Step, but one of my absolute favorites was Save By The Bell.” Right from the start it caught my attention with its catchy fast-paced theme song: “It’s alright, cause I’m saved by the bell. It’s alright, cause I’m saved by the bell.” I remember sitting on my bed bouncing up and down singing along. Then you would more than likely see Zack Morris and Screech up to something and then Zack is left by himself where he talks to the audience about his plan to win Kelly Kapowski’s heart while at the same time keep A.C. Slater away. Then we see Lisa with new info on the latest high school gossip with Screech right behind her reciting poetry followed by a “Get lost, Screech.” Wow, what a wonderful show. Mischief, conflict, love, with jokes scattered through the episode. The next thing you know, Zack says something that either ticks Kelly off or somehow pulls off a sly move but not without innocent Principle Belding knowing he is up to something but can’t quite figure out what it is. The show is so predictable but I couldn’t help but want to tune in every afternoon and hope for an episode I hadn’t seen yet.

Maybe it was the characters that made it so attractive. While in junior high I could relate to them; beautiful girl that you would love to go on a date with, but all the while there is some other guy that feels the same way, and of course you end up becoming enemies, which eventually brings you to become friends. So complex but so true. But maybe it was Screech. Just that name immediately made you want to figure out who this kid was. He is so innocent and his heart is always in the right place but just never can quite reach that goal of being accepted or winning over his love. Then there is Kelly–the popular head cheerleader who loves her fame but sometimes gets to be too much. And then there is there friend Jessie who is the over achiever, class president, straight A student that also become overwhelmed by the pressure of it all.

All of it is so generic. It sounds just like every other teen show. Look at Happy Days. You have the innocent one-Richey-and the more rebellious one that the innocent one follows-The Fons-and then throw in a diner where they all hang out for kicks. Something about it works. And what about that diner. Something is always happening there: cheerleaders getting people pumped up for the big game, A.C. Slater doing a ballet in front of everyone, the funny owner who gets to know everyone, and of course you rarely see them actually eat. It kind of makes you wish you yourself had a diner while you were growing up in high school.

There was something different about Saved By The Bell that set some of the other similar shoes apart. While the main focus was on this one group of friends somehow they let us know that they weren’t the only ones attending Bayside High School. In many other shoes you could easily lose the idea of the surrounding world and focus in on central characters but you always knew in Saved By The Bell that they were just a small part of a larger social construct. I believe this made the show feel more real. Because you knew they were in the same position you were, you knew they could identify with you and each episode of a different conflict told you “we did it and so can you.”

When they kept the show going into the college years something happened. Something was lost. They tried to carry the high school drama into college but it was too much. As a college student now, I can say that relationships, friends, and quarrels are totally different. We needed something real. Something we could relate to. I believe it was an outlet for us. I watched the show before I went to high school but for someone in junior high it still was a portal to a world where all the elements were there–school, homework, relationships, etc–but the way these students in the show handled it was the way we all wish we could have handled it. I could always see myself being the cool kid pulling out the huge cell phone (which almost no one had at that time). We were all too scared to do anything like that. I wanted to know how they could screw it all up so bad and yet come out on top in the end. They gave us hope. We could come out on top and guess what. We did. We graduated, but not without our daily dose of Saved By The Bell.

What I liked most about “Saved By The Bell” is the bond that they all have for one another by the end of the show. The story may start off with the focus on a girl or a boy but by the end it is all about comradery. Zack, A.C., and Screech are still buds. Lisa, Jessie, and Kelly are still girlfriends. It is so much a picture of what high school, in my eyes, really is. When I look back to my high school days I think about how my buddy C.T. and I took batting practice at his house almost everyday. I think about the times when all my friends and I would stay up on the weekends playing X-Box. I think about the time my friend Hunter tried to get that waitresses phone number. We didn’t care that the waitress totally ignored him (well, maybe Hunter did a little). We were just being friends. Through all the drama at the very end we could all hug and say our sad goodbyes because they were in fact sad. We were leaving, at this point, family.

“Lost” Like No One Before

The first time I saw “Lost” I thought, “Wow, this is a new twist on every other book and movie about being stranded on an island.” And I was right, although at the time the comment was a little spiteful. That was when the show first started. After this I didn’t watch it again for probably two years. And now, starting just one month ago I have come to see why the show has become such a big hit.

I started to watch the show on DVD, which is my preferred method because I don’t have to wait a whole week if I want to see the next episode. I have watched half way through third season and I can hardly wait to see the rest.

“Lost” is good on many different levels. First of all the show does a fantastic job allowing the viewers to get to know the characters. On many shows we just see the surface of who they are. Only if we study the show and are avid watchers do we really get a feel of who they are and what they struggle with. In “Lost” the wonderful flashback sends us to a time where one specific character has some kind of adverse situations. The number of people on this plane that have such outrageous stories is ridiculous but somehow that doesn’t bother me. I believe it is because I keep telling myself that possibly more people go through these things than I think. Anyways, back to the flashbacks. Through the flashbacks we learn what is on the mind of each character, how many of their stories are interconnected, and how these struggles from the past formed who they are on the island and how that effects their decisions and actions. This is so complex but the viewer comes to know the characters so well that we begin to care for them, which causes us to want more (not to mention yell at the TV., pleading for their life in a dangerous situation.

On top of this there is also a mystery to figure out. This brings another element of suspense. We want to know what is causing the characters to have hallucinations of people from their past, and what about this island heals a man from paralysis, and who in the world are these random people doing experiments on an unknown island! These are the things that make you sigh and cry “Why does it have to stop there? I have to know what happens to Jack!” when you here the drums at the end of an episode. On top of this there are the love triangles. While this isn’t such a big factor for me I know people rooting for Jack to sweep Kate off her feet or others who would prefer Sawyer to win her love.

More than anything, the shows ability to throw another curve ball at the viewer is amazing. Every show there is at least one, “Huh? How did that happen?” or a “What? I can’t believe this.” The writers seem fearless. “How about, we through in random polar bears that live on a tropical island and a black cloud that roams his territory and can cause people to hallucinate? Perfect.”

It sounds crazy but the show is brilliant. Because of these odd events, the viewer expects anything. And that is how the show gets people in the living room every showing—because the viewer knows he or she will be entertained. Many shows cannot do this. They are limited to the common family crisis of drugs or a daughter getting pregnant or the occasional annoying nerd next door, but “Lost” has a world of opportunities, and they utilize them.

What a Good Poem!

My sophomore year I had a class on Medical Literature. In this class we read several poems and narratives that we analyzed and really got deep in trying to see what the author was trying to do in his work of art. In each one there were so many different literary devices that I had never been aware of.

I remember one poem in particular. It was by Robert Frost and it was about a boy that was sawing wood and ended up injuring himself and dying. When I read this poem I really liked it and I could tell there was something about the poem that made it good but I didn’t know how to put my finger on it at first. Once I really started to analyze it I saw the alliteration and the puns and the high and low vowel patterns and the imagery and the line breaks and the word placement. It all began to come together in a way that was beautiful and intricate. It wasn’t just a set of lines that rhymed or sounded really confusing like I had always thought before about poetry. There was substance to it, and a lot of it. This opened my eyes up to the world of literature. For once I felt like there was a world of possibility; so many things to create; so many different devices I could use to create it; and oh how beautiful it could be. Writing suddenly became exciting. I was already a writing major but not because I enjoyed doing it, but because I thought it would help me in my future career.

After this experience I was actually excited about reading the next assignment and analyzing it. I wanted to learn new devices and hone my skills. There was hope of being a good writer. Throughout the semester we continued to try to get in the heads of the authors. They were intricate and wonderful and brilliant. They used devices that I had never seen before.

Now I am in a novella class and I am excited about finishing a rather large work of literature. Before I would feel intimidated by this assignment, and that’s what it would be; an assignment. But now I see it as a project, as a work of art. I am excited about looking back at it and being proud of what I wrote and knowing it is good. What is even more exciting is that I can create my own literary devices.

Because a teacher decided to teach a class in a way where I could discover the beauty of art for myself I learned to appreciate it. This is what made the difference. The teacher saw that the art was beautiful and had a passion for us coming to the knowledge of how beautiful it is.

I now see literature in a totally new light. It isn’t simply words on a page that has characters and a setting and a conflict but it is art; art that has meaning and must be interpreted. I can develop my own style; something I can call my own. There is an infinite number of possibilities. And that is exciting.

Mi Libro Favorito

I read “My Own Country” by Abraham Verghese one year ago and it changed the way I look at doctors, patients, families of patients, homosexuals, AIDS victims and the world before and during the AIDS epidemic. This book is an autobiographical about a doctor that was a pioneer in the treatment of AIDS in the 80’s. With each patient he encounters there is a genuine care for that patient and yet also a fear of him or her. The setting is in a time when AIDS was a new disease and even though the knowledge was there of how it was spread, fear came upon the world as people with HIV appeared in the workplace, at school, in churches, in families. Demeanor changed at the first notion of an acquaintance having HIV. The world never was the same.
“My Own Country” does a fantastic job of creating characters that the reader comes to love. You hope for a cure that you know didn’t come. You see their gruesome deaths. And you cry whether the family cries with you or not. Verghese can do this because he had intimate relationships with many of these patients. He came to know who they were, where they came from. He shared many of their fears, and watched them in their pain. While writing this story, it was no doubt an emotional experience for this brilliant writer.

The writer, who is also the main character in the story, is not ashamed to tell everything behind the scenes, down to his own stereotypes, awkward sexual confusions, the crumbling of his marriage, and how he himself changed from his first occurrence with AIDS until the end of the book. This allows the reader to come to a wider understanding of how this experience changed the writer. The reader doesn’t get just a surface description of the main character but a deep and thorough feel for who this character is and who he became.

Abraham Verghese has his first encounter with AIDS as a resident in a large metropolitan area in the north. By this time AIDS was becoming a common occurrence in the big cities, but when he moved to a small city in Tennessee AIDS and the effects of AIDS on the community became a completely different experience. Southern discrimination was at its worst but this time it wasn’t confined to a race. In fact completely different problems arose. For example, when a prominent business man in a small city is diagnosed with HIV after a blood transfusion he lies to his whole family in order to protect them from discrimination or from jumping to conclusions. Homosexuality was the first conclusion many people came to when HIV was mentioned. For a man such as this the fear of discrimination caused him and his wife to die a long a painful death alone.

This book will not only educate you on the dangers of HIV and AIDS but it will change your outlook on the world. You will not be the same after this book.