The Trifecta

When I was growing up, there were three women who were instrumental in keeping my only-child-self amused. I would say now that I had crushes on these women in a very real way, and I went back and forth between wanting to be their best friends, wanting to be married to them, and wanting to actually be them. Looking back on them now, the traits that all three of them share are pretty interesting and are, I think, pretty telling of who I am.

1. Linda Hamilton -- Catherine Chandler on Beauty and the Beast
2. Louise Robey -- Micki Foster on Friday the 13th: The Series
3. Gillian Anderson -- Dana Scully on The X-Files

All three women had peripheral relationships with men, but were never *really* involved with them. None of them ever married, and all three were fantastically devoted to their jobs, to the point of distraction. All lived very dangerous, risky lives.

I wonder if part of the reason that I don't see any reason to involve myself with a man is because during my most formative years (1987 -- 1997, ages 10-20), I watched these women as models of who I wanted to someday be when I grew up. Part of being an only child is modeling oneself after specific adults rather than after peers. I never felt a connection to anyone my age, only to these television women.

It's interesting to look at them now, pictures on the internet and articles on what they're doing now, because now I see that these women were really just women. They were all married, they had children, they were simply doing their jobs acting out characters. I have no doubt that if I had seen these shows as an adult that they would have been just tv shows, nothing more and nothing less.

So what's the moral here? Keep track of what your kids watch on tv, lest they fall in love with a beast-man from the New York City subway system or an alien-hunting-socially-retarded G-man, while busy working at their job as an assistant district attorney or alien hunter or paranormal object collector. Seriously.