(photo credit IMDB)
When
I was in 5th and 6th grade my favorite TV shows
were The Brady Bunch, Charlie's Angels, Fantasy Island, and Love
Boat. I took the Charlie's Angels obsession pretty far, though. My
friend "Diana" and I would get together for play dates and act out
episodes of the show.
First
of all, I can't believe my mother let me watch those Aaron Spelling
shows. I remember her (or maybe it was the Swede) saying, “You
watch, there will be a woman in a bikini, for no apparent reason, in
the first ten minutes of the show.” Sure enough, there was. I
don't suppose 11 year old girls were the demographic he was actually
going for with that move, but we sure loved the show. Action,
danger, spying, detective work, undercover secret missions, spy
gadgets – it was awesome.
Diana was rather bossy (um, yes, there are people
bossier than me) and would decide what mission we were on, record
“Charlie” telling us our mission, and play it back on her tape
recorder. We'd get our equipment ready – we had a lot of stuff,
most of it homemade out of other things.
Blocks of wood, painted and
with a pipe-cleaner antenna were our walkie-talkies. We had ID
cards, carefully typed up and aligned on an old, manual typewriter. My
mom even let me use an expired credit card. I tried some security by
taping over the number with masking tape and putting a new number
there. I'm sure that would have stopped any nefarious use...We also
had check books – old checks with the account number cut off. We
had great fun "buying" stuff to outfit us for each assignment. Accessories are always an important part of the mission!
Our
purses were probably our best accomplishment. We each had several.
Some were real purses bought with hard-earned money, but most of them
we made ourselves. We had rudimentary sewing skills, so a draw
string bag could be accomplished as could flat ones, like a clutch
purse. We also made a lot of stuff out of cardboard and scotch tape.
We
really got into character. I was Jill (Farrah Fawcett, I was blonde
after all, and aspired to have her hair). Diana, who was of Indian
descent was Kelly (Jaclyn Smith). Mom even let us put on make-up for
the occasion. As you can see, we were quite stylish.
Here
I'm playing with Swissie, and DataBoy got in the picture. Of course my eyes are closed so you can see my nifty blue eyeshadow...
This was an undercover assignment as cowgirls. We got to carry “guns”. That's Diana on the left (and part of the other picture from my album.)
With
only a few hours of TV allowed a week, we made the best use of what
we saw and had hours of fun recreating the episodes, as accurately as
possible. I'm glad Momarazzi documented it all so I can show you
more embarrassing childhood photos...
What
made up games did you play? Did you ever watch Charlie's Angels?
~Tina
