No CoCo makes Brandy a sad panda.
I was in high school when Late Night With Conan O’Brien first started airing. I think I was new enough for high school for it to have been middle school in most regions. I don’t remember exactly because that was roughly forty-seven years ago.
And I don’t usually bring up disowned relatives, but there was a particularly eventful time in my life when I realized that my uncles were especially disownable. My mother, my sisters and I were living in a house that they owned, and we finally found a new place in a new town. We anticipated the move with glee and post-dated relief. My uncles were assholes and we were finally getting away from them. I had just graduated high school, and I was in a period of limbo between high school and college, sticking around at home to help take care of my youngest sister, who had recently been diagnosed with autism. I didn’t have a lot going on. I didn’t have a lot of confidence. I watched a lot of television.
I watched Conan every night. Every single night. This was the last stage of my life that didn’t involve the internet or gainful employment. I had few sources of entertainment and expression. I wrote poetry and drew pictures, neither of which will ever see the light of any monitor in existence (you’re welcome), and I ate crackers and I slept and dreamed and bought magazines. Now that I’m writing about it, it’s starting to sound especially pathetic and I wish I had that kind of free time now that I value it and seem to have so little of it.
Anyway, TV was pretty much it. And Conan was my favorite show of all.
One night, the evil uncles found out about our plans to vacate, and they reacted – howyousay – poorly. Worst of all, they came in to our living room, unplugged the TV, and carted it out. Conan was on. I was deprived mid-monologue. It was the worst day of that entire year.
And look at me now! I no longer consider myself to have uncles. And if anybody tried to take my TV, I would beat the crap out of them. My life involves more than crackers and television, and I’m pretty much all grown up!
Unless I’m experiencing memory block (and I seem to be experiencing the opposite of that), weeknights haven’t been Conan-free since the beginning of Late Night. But now, now I’m left hanging. It’s like I have uncles again. It feels wrong. It shouldn’t be.
