The Sunday Memory Drawer Redux: Remembering The Wonder Years

Caution to all readers once again: In the body of this entry, shameless name dropping will occur.

No television show has ever captured the world of a teenager better than "The Wonder Years." Actually, no television has ever captured MY world as a teenager better than "The Wonder Years." The timing, the setting, and the ambience was all spot on. It was like a camera had been focused on me and my friends all those years. In a lot of respects, I was Kevin Arnold. The same flip-flopping of hormones and emotions. I had best friends just like Paul Pfeffer. And, of course, there was a girl very much like Winnie Cooper. Didn't every guy once have a girl in school like Winnie Cooper?

"The Wonder Years" was on the air during the late 80s and early 90s just in time for my resurgence as a writer. Coupled with a new partner, this show, along with several others, once again spiked a keg in my barrel of creative juices. It was an ideal show to write some spec scripts for. We tried our hand at "The Golden Girls," "Designing Women," and "Murphy Brown." But, given the subject matter, "The Wonder Years" would allow us to get a little deeper because it was real and we could touch and feel it. As my partner and I would come to do as part of our normal writing regimen, we each wrote our own first drafts and then the other one would do the editing and polishing. My partner wrote a script about Kevin's relationship with an English teacher, and it was loosely based on an instructor in his not-so-distant past.

As for me and my first draft, I turned one more time to the influence that had connected many, many points in my life.

My grandmother.

I crafted a story that captured a dilemma that I had endured when I was a kid. At the time, the house where I lived with my parents and grandparents was next door to that quintessential neighborhood playground---a vacant lot. My friends loved to grab whatever type of ball was available and play there regularly. I wanted to join in, but my grandmother was dead set against anybody playing there. It's not like she owned the land, but she certainly was not welcoming the noise. So, stuck in the middle of this, I had to deal with my grandmother's obstinance and my friends' constant complaining about her. To complicate issues, any ball that zoomed onto our property became fair game. And my grandmother would be quick to gobble them up like the Jets' Emerson Boozer going after a fumble.

One day, I was looking for something in her pantry. I opened a bottom drawer and found a veritable sporting goods store. Balls of all shapes and kinds. Years and years of interrupted games on the vacant lot next door. It was quite the collection.

And, several decades later, I had my "Wonder Years" script. Young Kevin lives in a neighborhood where such a "mean and nasty old lady" exists. And, via a nifty but plausible plot device, he winds up having to sit with her for an afternoon. Kevin realizes that the woman was not so mean and nasty. As I wrote about this woman who I conveniently made German in nationality, my grandmother was channeled through my mind, then my typing fingers, and onto the computer page. Here, for your reading pleasure, is one of the scenes in the second act. Kevin is spending an afternoon in the old lady's (named Kay) house:

NARRATOR: She was old, she was cranky and she had a razor sharp mind.

KAY: I've seen 'em all on Ed Sullivan. I used to like his show until he brought those crazy Beatles over here with all that hippie nonsense.

KEVIN: The Beatles are great.

KAY: They look like a bunch of Sissy Marys.

KEVIN: Their music is awesome. That has nothing to do with how they look.

NARRATOR: I was having a semi-intellectual discussion about modern music with an eighty-five-year-old woman. And enjoying it.

KEVIN: You really miss the old days, don't you?

KAY: You don't know how much.

NARRATOR: She was right. I didn't. I didn't know much about anything from the past, except what I read in history class. But no textbook would give me the education I would get in the next two hours. Kay became my nonstop chronicler of the life and times of an average American in the first seventy-two years of the 20th Century. I learned things I never knew before. About immigration.

KAY: My Augie and I came to this country from Germany. He drove a milk truck for thirty years. Never did have much of a salary. We lived in a cramped apartment and the neighborhood was full of people just like us.

NARRATOR: About world affairs.

KAY: That Roosevelt was no good. All he kept saying was again and again and again, no American boy will set foot on foreign shores. Before you knew it, they were all overseas with guns and tanks and whatnot.

NARRATOR: About personal loss.

KAY: We came over here from Germany to make a good life for ourselves. And then my youngest boy goes off to war...and gets killed...in Germany.

NARRATOR: I learned about historical events.

KAY: I remember when Little Ricky Ricardo was born. The same day Eisenhower was inaugurated. The next day, at the beauty parlor, not one person mentioned Ike. All everybody talked about was Lucy and Little Ricky.

NARRATOR: I wrestled with Kay's odd view of scientific discovery.

KAY: Remember when those crazy lunatics walked around on the moon? For almost two months after that, it rained. I mean poured. Remember? That was (POINTING UP) His way of telling us that we had no business going up there.

KEVIN: Yeah, but just because it rained here, that doesn't mean it rained all over the country.

KAY: The hell you say. It rained everywhere. They said it on the news.

KEVIN: What news?

KAY (WITH PRIDE): Walter Cronkite.

With some literary liberties, pretty much all of that dialogue came from previous conversations with my grandmother. She really did believe that the moon walk had provoked rain. Of course, to close the story, I went back to the vacant lot. And the sporting good equipment.

NARRATOR: It had been quite a day. In just under two hours, I had grown to like and respect and admire the very creature which, until a few hours ago, I was convinced had put a couple of children in her oven and eaten them for supper. But, something told me I had only scratched the surface of this woman.

KEVIN NOTICES THE HALL CLOSET. THE DOOR IS OPEN SLIGHTLY. KEVIN WALKS OVER TO THE CLOSET. HE REACHES FOR THE DOORKNOB, HESITATES, AND THEN GRABS THE HANDLE. KEVIN OPENS THE CLOSET DOOR. AT FIRST, HIS FACE REGISTERS FEAR. A BASEBALL ROLLS FROM THE TOP OF THE CLOSET AND HITS KEVIN ON THE HEAD. KEVIN WINCES AND GRABS HIS HEAD. THE BALL BOUNCES AND ROLLS ACROSS THE FLOOR. THE TOP SHELF OF THE CLOSET IS LINED WITH EVERY KIND OF BALL IMAGINABLE. ON THE FLOOR OF THE CLOSET ARE MORE BALLS. IN THE CORNER OF THE CLOSET IS A BOX. KEVIN LEANS DOWN AND PULLS THE BOX FROM THE CLOSET. THE BOX IS FULL OF MORE BALLS. KEVIN SLOWLY SMILES.

NARRATOR: Yep, Kay was a strange old bird. And I couldn't help but like her.

Spec scripts are generally never bought or produced. But, our scripts for "The Wonder Years" got us into a prestigious NY writing workshop. And we were on our bumpy way.

Over the years, I misplaced the remaining copies of the "Wonder Years" scripts. But, in the year 2008, I suddenly had reason to try and dig them up.

I was going to meet Winnie Cooper.

When the show was on, I don't think there were any redblooded males who couldn't connect this character, wonderfully played by Danica McKellar, with some sweet young thing in their past. Along with Valerie Bertinelli on "One Day at a Time," these girls were my reminders of idyllic impossibilities. Because I was so fond of the Winnie Cooper character, I sort of kept track of Danica's career. She did a little more acting, but also went to UCLA and became this major math whiz. She was so adept at the numbers that she crafted a book that would help middle school girl students become not so afraid of the subject.

And then, one Sunday at church, this book comes up in conversation with a very good friend of mine, herself a quite renowned math teacher at a very well known Los Angeles private school.

"Yes, Danica was one of my students."

Huh?????

"Actually, I am mentioned in the book and part of it is dedicated to me."

Huh????????????

"And she's writing another book and I am going to be helping her out with it."

HUH????????????????????

Now, throughout her teaching career, my friend has had many, many contacts with the rich and famous. And, generally, I never pressed her for details.

Until now.

I transformed into an annoying pest as smoothly as a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. I was totally mystified that I didn't know this little fact of life previously. And I hinted around less than casually how I could broker a little meeting. For Pete's sake, this WAS Winnie Cooper.

This fine lady was already a friend for life, but now she is locked in ways beyond that as far as I am concerned. Because she arranged a dinner for the three of us. And before I knew it, we were chomping down on Italian food in some Brentwood eatery.

Okay, I'm usually not a gawker when it comes to celebrities. In Los Angeles, they're a dime a dozen and you see them all over. In the supermarket. At Walgren's. Waiting at the car wash. And when I see them in a restaurant, I always wonder about the nobodys that the celebrity is dining across from. In this case, I noticed some of the other patrons in the restaurant eyeing our table. Danica looks very much like she did as Winnie Cooper, just a trifle older. She was adorable. And I am thinking about what all these people are thinking.

"There's Winnie Cooper...but who's the schlub she's with?"

It was an incredibly delightful evening. I heard a lot more about math theorems than I thought I would (My friend and Danica did talk a little shop). But, I certainly got in my licks on what she was doing. And, while I thought about dumping our old script on her napkined lap, I refrained. I practice really hard to be non-annoying with actors I meet and this was my finest un-pesty moment. I did get to talk with her about the following clip, which was one of the best episodes of "The Wonder Years." Danica was concentrating on school at that time and was not seen in a number of episodes. But, the producers brought her back in a very surprising sequence. I remember seeing it the first time and my heart raced with the thought that Kevin would ultimately end up with Winnie. Because that's what we all wanted. As an audience. And as males.

Danica was a terrific dinner mate and perhaps there might be something we could work together on. Who knows? But, for the evening, it brought me all back to my youth, my writing, and my career.

But, after all, aren't these all our very own "wonder years?"

Dinner last night: Jumbalaya at the Blue Bayou in Disneyland.