Rarely does an entire Simpsons episode go by without a joke about the television being a surrogate parent for Bart and Lisa, a childhood friend, and an educational tool to boot. Yeah, the joke’s probably overdone by now, but the real irony (or tragedy) here is that a lot of us really have learned more from TV than we have anywhere else. Just about three people haven’t grown up with a television influence (they’re the only ones that don’t know the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle theme song). Most people have only been affected to the point that they know who Fonzie is and could probably name at least five former cast members of Saturday Night Live.

Others have much deeper scars. Some grew up almost entirely depending on the idiot box for continued sustenance, planning their lives around Looney Tunes marathons and worrying constantly if Ross and Rachel would ever get back together. If you know somebody like this, be very careful.

If you’re good enough, you can spot one of these people a hundred yards away. They’re the ones who, raised on a steady diet of The Wonder Years and Saved By the Bell, think that they actually live in a television show. We know this because, every now and then, they will turn to an empty space and say something like "Boy, we’re in a pickle now!" to nobody in particular. Why do they do this? Because they’re talking to the camera (duh). These people also have a tendency to exaggerate some things–finding no pizza in the lunch line, they’re liable to scream "My life is a living nightmare!" and run away sobbing. At home, their mother will tell them that one of their friends called, though she can’t remember which one, and they will moan "Nobody understands me!" and run upstairs sobbing. Well, at least they keep things entertaining.

No; I’m being mean. I know people can’t control the way they behave; after years of watching problems neatly solved in 30 minutes including commercials, it can be difficult to deal with real issues, especially ones that may never be completely squared away. Perhaps these people can’t stop themselves from buying the brand of shoes they saw advertised during Charles in Charge, because the others look… unfamiliar. And of course, their friends’ problems couldn’t possibly be as important as their own — after all, their friends are just supporting characters.

I know people like this exist because I am one of them. Coming into high school, I expected I’d have a core group of six friends or so, we’d go hang out at The Max every day after school, get free cheeseburgers and plan the next kooky scam to make fun of our loser principal. My nerdy-but-loveable friend would develop all these crazy inventions like talking robots and mind-control tapes while I would use my cunning wiles to make sure that the hottest girl would fall in love with me the week before Prom. Classes would mostly be a joke; nobody ever does homework on TV anyway, right?

Then, of course, I actually got to high school. Most of these four years consisted of me playing Nintendo and doing a ridiculous amount of work for my IB classes, which you should never take (though it’s probably too late by now, huh?). I was lucky if I could even spare the money for a cheeseburger every now and then, though if I’d actually gorged fast food daily I’d probably have ended up with the complexion of a hedgehog anyway. My friends were too lazy to make a cheese sandwich, let alone a sentient robot. Oh, and that one time I hatched the crazy scheme to spray-paint "CHRIS ROOLZ" all over the front of our school? I spent the might in jail and had to take a grammar course on Saturday mornings. Man, I bet Mr. Belding would’ve just laughed it off.

You may think that was a low point, but you should’ve seen me during my action flick days. I called myself Hermann von Fist and went looking for shady Columbian drug dealers to karate chop into submission. I never found any in my quaint suburban town, so I just had to settle with beating up annoying middle schoolers from time to time. I got to spout awe-inspiring quips such as "Time to take out a mortgage… on your face!!" as I gloriously pummeled the seventh grade chess team. I thought it was pretty heroic, though the local authorities didn’t seem to think so. And there I was, back in prison overnight for the second time that month.

Eventually even I learned (grudgingly) that real life is not like television. Though I still have my relapses, the really sad part of all this is that in the most extreme cases, we’re past salvation. Whenever I hear someone say "I have not yet begun to fight!" I’m not sure whether to slap them because they said it, or myself because it could have just as easily been me in that embarrassing position. I’m scared of myself; I’m absolutely petrified that there are more of us out there.

Television has poisoned America’s children with the power of melodrama. Or maybe it goes even deeper than that; maybe this is simply the first stage of an elaborate plot to bring socialism to the United States under the guise of network television. I, er, they, have a saying: "Communism did not die, it just went underground." Now maybe it’s just me, but in light of this study it seems fairly obvious that Leon Trotsky and his red army will be resurrected as militant Soviet cyborgs once Ted Turner and Aaron Spelling have completed their slow but permanent brainwashing of America’s youth. Within a century, America will run red with communism! The statue of liberty will be replaced by Lenin’s tomb! We cannot allow this to happen! We must not–ah, hell. Family Guy is on. I’ll probably finish this later or something. (Roll credits).