I have two very fond childhood memories that center on the family television set. One was getting to eat in the den every Sunday night so that we could watch "60 Minutes." Food in the den...in front of mom and dad?! Egads! At no other time did we dare do this. Apparently, Morley Safer and Dan Rather tempered our parents' spirits, making such miracles possible.
I loved carrying my dinner into the den on a big, brown tray and balancing it on my knees. With any luck, I got into the den early and found myself a coveted spot on the couch. And I swear that those glorious, magical trays somehow made the food taste better, too. Now, my mom's not much of a cook, so the trays really may have improved the taste of those meals, leeching their special "tray-ness" into the night's Shepard's pie or meatloaf.
My other televised highlight was the annual Miss America Pageant. The sheer anticipation of the show created a palpable buzz in the Raglin household. If it was possible for a houseful of smart alecks to be all atwitter about something, The Miss America contest was just that thing. Come 7 p.m. the night of the show, our den was chock full of audience members, paper and pencils in hand as we prepared to crown the next Miss America.
What other show could bring together a family like that? What other show offered the boys and men one buxom eyeful after another, while also drawing the approval of the females in the room? Where else but on Miss America could a person watch a violin concerto followed by a ventriloquist act or a tumbling routine?
While we never held out much hope that Miss Nebraska would end the night with an armful of flowers or a sparkling tiara, we at least hoped that she would not shame us, that, somehow, her hayseed tendencies would go unsown on national television. And, if Miss Kansas or Miss Iowa proved to be a talented looker, we could at least draw some satisfaction in the fact that our states touched.
So, it was with more than a little curiosity that I turned on the television set last night, running through the channels until I found the contest. We had already had dinner, so already my childhood memories lost a bit of their magic. And neither Eric nor Allison was with us, Mark and I falling on this glamorous grenade without them. We hemmed and hawed and tried to justify settling on the Miss America Pageant, blaming Netflix for sending us a season of "Sopranos" that we'd already seen. Even though we were the ones who'd ordered it. Again.
And so, Tony Soprano made room for 53 girls in sparkling cocktail dresses, their minds abuzz with dreams of a better world, with them at the center of it. I know, I know. Fifty THREE? Apparently, D.C., the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico wanted their chance to shine, too.
What I noticed first was that the songs they danced to were the same songs that Allison listens to. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or bad, or if I needed to have a talk with my daughter. Instead, I held my tongue, and encouraged Mark to put his back in his mouth.
Most shocking to me were the snarky introductions each contestant gave for herself. Bad puns, statehood slights and too many references to athletic teams punctuated these introductions. And the fact that each contestant yelled hers made it all a bit much for me.
Within the first ten minutes of the show, the judges had already whittled down the crowd of contestants (what do they call a group of beauty queens? A bevy of beauts? A murder of mamas? A bunch of bulimics?). A mere dozen remained, including--pinch me now!--Miss Nebraska.
We hung in through the bathing suit contest. Miss Nebraska, after all, had made the first cut, so we at least owed her another ten minutes to make sure she didn't slip in her heels.
We lost our oomph shortly after that, secretly disappointed that nothing popped out and no one slipped up during this portion of the pageant. Part of me wanted to stick around for the entertainment, but the pull of the Sealy Posturpedic proved too powerful to resist.
Would I sooner eat off my arm than allow my daughter to be in a beauty pageant? Damn straight! Do I know just how empty it is to judge people by their looks? Of course. Was I more than a little creeped out by the interviews with former beauty queens, each more elastic than the other? One hundred percent "yes."
But I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't just a little proud this morning to see Miss Nebraska's glowing smile greet me on the front page of the Sunday paper. In these lean times, we need to celebrate all of our victories. Even the lean, vacuous ones.
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