Remington Steel Home

I love television, right.

So, I loved this detective show Remington Steele. It was impossible to hide. All day Tuesday I would be anxious about it…like I had a meeting or a date with someone. I was ten so I did not know what a date was.

It was like this: every night of the week that was not Tuesday I would sit alone in my room and shut my eyes and imagine myself into that world. I would be one or the other of the main characters. Slowly, over time, this world became my life, more real to me than the small town, the trailer, the family I lived in. I knitted it all together so that, when I was alone in my room I brought Remington Steele alive in there with me. But also, when I watched the show, I brought myself into the show.



Here is how.

First everyone had to be asleep. That was fine. My stepfather and mother would be in bed by 7:30 pm. They would turn off the heat. I would listen to them in the kitchen and then moving off down the hall. Always on Tuesdays my stepfather would make jokes about Remington Steele. If he was in a good mood he would say maybe there will be a news pre-emption. If he was in a bad mood he would threaten to rip the aerial off the house or kick the tv in. These threats, small and large, would feed the embers of my panic. I could not ever show anything though, of course. I knew that I had to see the show because I was the show, it was part of me and as crucial to my survival as my organs and daily fruit loops. Not seeing it was not possible anyways.

To ensure that my stepfather would never stop me (Remington Steele) I had more than just a first step. Also, I had to be sitting with straight legs on the couch with one square couch pillow behind my back. I had to have the ugly orange and purple itchy crocheted blanket over my legs and hips. I had to breathe very shallowly throughout the show so I could hear it as it had to be turned down very low so as not to disturb my stepfather. And finally, most importantly, I had to have absolutely no hair on my face at all. This meant very carefully and repeatedly wetting my hands and pushing all the hair around my face behind my ears.



This protected me (Remington Steele). After the show I would go to bed and re-enact in my head the entire episode changing things (but not really) to fit with my life and integrate that episode with my week.

Summer reruns nothing changed, it was just an opportunity to fix anything I might have done wrong.