Pilgrim Tales and Bradybunch Agogo

When I was a little kid, reruns of the Brady Bunch used to come on every afternoon and I would watch them religiously. I wanted to be Cindy. Keep in mind, I was very young at this point. I didn't quite grasp that they wrote her as a simpleton.

Back then, I saw it as a logical choice. My grandmother reminded me of Marsha. My mom reminded me of Jan. This meant I had to be the Cindy.  You know, the fact that there were two adult women on the show but I didn't perceive them as being anything like my grandmother and mother says a lot about the maturity of these two women . . .

Anyway, one of the episodes that I always loved was the one where Greg has to do a school project about the pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock.  Because the family was large and had access to a home movie projector, Greg decided to do a film about the pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving.

Everyone is really into the idea, but of course they all have their own opinions about how things should go. They wanted prettier clothing or more violence or some level of romantic lead. In the end, Greg made some compromises, but stood his ground in other places. All of this resulted in a nicely cheesy little film that probably earned him an A.

The interesting thing about this episode is that I believe it's one of the things that inspired tiny me to aspire to being a writer. Some of my first writing efforts were plays and I believe I started those due, in part, to how cool I thought it was that the Brady family made a film at home.