Misty water-colored memories.

Having nothing better to do, and enjoying that fact immensely, I was perusing the channel 11 program listings right before 8pm tonight. I noticed that The Dukes of Hazzard was on at 8pm on the Country Music Network. Or CMT, whatever that stands for. I've deprogrammed the CMT from my cable scanning so that I don't even have to see it when I skip through, so this was particularly interesting. And I had a moment.

Between the ages of 6-8, The Dukes of Hazzard WAS my Friday night. It came on at 8pm, and it was unusual for my parents to let us watch TV after 8pm at that point in my life. (I recall a random time now and then when I caught a SNL episode, which was VERY unusual at that point in my life. I can't recall which episodes I was actually able to witness as a young gal but the Mr Robinson's Neighborhood, James Brown parody and Shark Candy Delivery episodes were very familiar when I saw them later in life, so I can only presume.)

Anyway, my parents made an exception for the Dukes, for whatever reason. (Probably because my dad was huge Waylon Jennings fan, and my folks were both country when country wasn't cool.) It was a huge deal. My mom would make popcorn, and my brother and I would lay on the floor in front of the TV and eat popcorn out of those wooden bowls that still live in my parents' cabinet, and we would watch Luke and Bo get out of whatever ridiculous situation Roscoe P. Coltrane or Boss Hogg got them into each week.

We even had an insult for each other - "you're like Roscoe P Coltrane - you PEE in your COLE TRAIN hahaha." We had no idea what it meant, but we said it regardless.

And I recall going to a county fair, and playing one of those games where you have to shoot enough water into the clown's mouth, or get a ping-pong ball into a milk bottle, or pick the right rubber duck, and anyway I won a prize. For my prize I chose a poster of Daisy Duke because I thought she was just THE SHIT. I had a huge crush on Luke Duke when I was 6-12 years old, but I seemed to notice that Daisy Duke was able to get them out of all sorts of trouble using her wits and/or her feminine wiles. So I chose her poster.

[Now that I think about it, the Daisy Duke poster had a scantily clad photo of Catherine Bach in "Daisy Dukes" on it. Probably seemed kind of odd to the carnival guy at the time to give a poster of a scantily clad woman to a 6-year-old, but it damn certain made sense to me. After all, I had an older brother who would torment me at a moment's notice. A year later I also insisted on being Princess Leia. Little did I know that she would go on to be every male's fantasy in her Jabba slave outfit. "Women power and I'll be over here," indeed.]

I'm still watching this particular episode of the Dukes, and I still have a crush on (then) Luke, and I still remember this particular episode. And I'm OK with all of that. As scary as that may sound.