Growing up without a male role model, I was forced to turn to the world of television. It was 1980, and I was either looking in the wrong place, or there were not that many viable broadcast options for a 12 going on 13 year old wanna-be-rebellious mama’s boy.
I guess I was also a sister’s boy too, if there even was such a thing.
There were other boys at school, but, being my peers, they were equally uninformed – but hopefully not as pathetic as I considered myself to be. Except for Mr. Bishop (who told a couple of harrowing stories of the Watts Riots), the teachers were all dicks and were therefore unapproachable. Where would I turn to find an older guy to show me how to avoid the pitfalls of my teen years? To show me how to, you know, just be a guy?