But I figured out why Friends struck such an emotional chord with these people. It's because for many of us, last week's episode was everybody's adolescent dreams come true. I mean, first we find out that Rachel (who had a nose the size of small fishing vessels) and Monica (who was sporting the Louis Anderson physique) grew up to look like Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox. This is most teenage women's dreams come true.
Yes, I realize that teenage women should ideally have loftier goals like becoming senators (coincidentally, teenage women becoming senators was also Bob Packwood's dream come true), but that's kind of hard to do when Calvin Klein is telling young America that the ideal look for kids nowadays is that of a concentration camp victim. I see a CK1 commercial on TV, and my first reaction is to send non-perishable canned goods down to L.A. And when you're a teenage woman trying to look like these models, it's hard to come up with ambitious goals. Mostly because you're passing out due to malnutrition. But I digress...
And then, of course, there's Ross, the awkward kid who did something nice for a girl he has a crush on but never really noticed him. And then, many years later, that girl is kissing him. With tongue. This hit me pretty hard, considering as how I was probably one of those awkward kids.
I mean, don't get me wrong. I had a social life in high school (6th and 7th grade is a different story, but we won't get into that...). But I was always that kid who was a little strange because he was interested in computers. I find this kind of ironic nowadays, seeing as how I am often cornered by attractive women at parties who want to discuss web pages with me all evening. Not that I am complaining.
But it kind of makes me wonder what happened in high school to make science so uncool. I mean, back in 5th grade, science was great. Science was all the rage. At recess, all the boys would go out to the playground and conduct science experiments on solar energy, usually involving magnifying glasses and a few unfortunate ants. (Note to all you science research types: It turns out if you burn off an ant's head, the rest of its body continues to twitch. So when do we get grant money?) Our second favorite experiment involved mechanical engineering, in which we tried to see how high we could get our school's hot dogs to bounce. (Answer: 6 feet.)
But then something happened around Junior High School. Something that changed science for the rest of our lives -- Safety glasses. This was a big problem in Junior High, because a) You looked like a dork, b) You looked like a big dork, and c) There was no way you could possibly injure yourself if you wore safety glasses. In Junior High school, things were only socially acceptable if there was a good chance you could seriously injure yourself in the process. Skateboarding? Cool. Skateboarding down a flight of stairs, falling off, landing on your head and leaving little pieces of brain on the bannister? Cooler. Wearing a helmet? Nerd city.
What we clearly need to do is make science fashionable again. "Impossible," you say? Not at all. (And don't interrupt me when I'm in the middle of a column. That's so rude.) All we need to do is hire the tobacco industry to do some PR for the sciences. I mean, consider what the tobacco industry has done -- they've not only made smoking cool, but they've made it rebellious. Think about that. Okay, we all know that smoking turns your lungs into stuff resembling what your cat coughs up. But when you smoke, you're essentially saying, "Gosh! I'd like to let one of the biggest corporations in America lead me around like a little puppet!" Ooh... excuse me while I cringe in fear of your rebellious nature.
So I think the tobacco industry could really turn the science field around. They could go into schools and tell kids how performing science experiments can be very dangerous; there's a good chance you'd hurt yourself. And science experiments should really only be performed by adults over the age of 18. This would attract the attention of every kid in America between the ages of 12 and 17. Within weeks, you'll have all the bad-ass kids hangin' out in the bathrooms with test tubes and beakers and all the wimpy kids would be left playing some nerdy sport like football, where they have to wear (giggle) helmets.
You'd probably have to give up the safety glasses part, too, which would lead to occasional blindness, but quite frankly, I don't think that would discourage anybody. (They also said the same thing about masturbation.)
I think it's a plan that shows great initiative and would move this country forward, and we should immediately get somebody on the case. But not me. Friends is almost on, and I don't want to miss Jennifer Aniston's new outfit.