My Turn By Robert Paul Reyes/Last Week's Column

LAST WEEK'S COLUMN

MY TURN BY ROBERT PAUL REYES

March 18, 2002

A KISS IS JUST A KISS

A kiss is just a kiss. Millions of people kiss each day. A wife pecks her husband on the cheek before he steps out the front door to face another day at the office. A Mom smooches her crying child on his skinned knee. A teen girl locks lips with her boyfriend who just came home from college. A visiting aunt busses the forehead of her young niece.

A kiss is just a kiss. It's the way human beings spread love, communicate love and exhibit love. A kiss is the glue that binds relationships together. A kiss is the lubricant that keeps the world spinning on its axis.

A kiss is just a kiss, but I wouldn't want to live in a world where kissing is prohibited. To me a kiss is so precious that I never "blow" a loved one a kiss. The act of osculating should be wet, juicy and messy.

A kiss is just a kiss, except in the land of Jerry Falwell. A kiss is just a kiss, except when it's a young girl kissing another young girl.

The program director of a local TV station choose not to air an episode of a popular dramatic series because it included a scene of two teen girls kissing each other. He found such a normal and everyday occurrence "personally offensive."

This same television station broadcasts programs that include acts of violence and mayhem. Apparently this TV executive has a high tolerance for violence but zero tolerance for two human beings engaged in an act that is the very essence of what it means to be a loving and caring person.

What I find personally offensive is such a blatant example of censorship. It reeks of the same kind of intolerance exhibited by the Taliban. I may be a wee bit optimistic but I think that even in Lynchburg most people would not be offended at the sight of two girls expressing affection for each other. In any event, that should be a decision left to the citizens of Lynchburg. Anyone who is so twisted that he is disgusted at such a beautiful display of love can always click to the Home Shopping Network or to any number of channels showing movies replete with blood and guts.

THE TRAGIC DOWNFALL OF BARRY WILLIAMS

"Here's the story of a lovely lady

Who was bringing up three very lovely girls.

All of them had hair of gold, like their mother,

The youngest one in curls.

Here's the store, of a man named Brady,

Who was busy with three boys of his own,

They were four men, living all together,

Yet they were all alone.

Till the one day when the lady met this fellow

And they knew it was much more than a hunch,

That this group would somehow form a family.

That's the way we all became the Brady Bunch."

That song is the soundtrack of my childhood of innocence and depravity, pessimism and optimism. The Brady Bunch ruled the airwaves 1969-1974, when I was a teenager. I may one day forget the words to the pledge of allegiance, but I will never forget the lyrics to this fabulous theme song.

This classic sit-com begins with each of the Brady's smiling faces enclosed in a square. Mom. Dad and Alice in the middle squares, the boys on one side and the girls on the other. These citizens of TV land did not think outside the box, they lived inside a box, they thrived inside their middle class conformity.

Everything in the Brady universe was orderly. Dad went to work. Mom stayed home to help Alice with the housework. The kids skipped off to school. There was never a moral problem or an ethical quandary that could not be solved in 30 minutes.

This was in marked contrast to my home life. My Mom and dad both had to work long hours in a noisy factory so my four siblings and I could have enough beans and rice to eat. And we didn't have no damn maid to clean up the mess that five kids invariably created.

I had the fortune/misfortune of bearing an uncanny resemblance to Barry Williams. My brother and sisters would call me "Barry" when they wanted to get my goat. But I was secretly pleased that I looked so much like Greg Brady. I looked up to the eldest Brady sibling because he had a world of possibilities open to him. He could be an architect like his old man, or he could be "Johnny Bravo" the talented singer and teen heartthrob. As a minority growing up on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, I just looked forward to graduating from high school.

I was 17 by the time that the Brady Bunch went off the air, by that time I no longer secretly enjoyed being called "Greg Brady." I didn't want to be like Greg -- enclosed in a box smiling inanely at an absurd world. I wanted to smash boxes, to cross lines and to taste the kind of brownies that Alice would never in a million years bake.

Nevertheless, throughout the years Greg Barry remained in my mind as a symbol of my fun and carefree youth. Every now and then I would even watch an episode or two of the Brady Bunch.

Last week my brother called me and told me about the "Celebrity Boxing" program on the Fox network. One match would feature Barry Williams of the Brady Bunch against Danny Bonaduce of the Partridge Family.

I said to myself, "If has-been actors and B-list celebrities want to duke it out for fun, fame and fortune, I'll watch."

I'm very sorry that I watched this circus spectacle for the bored and the depraved. An athletic and well-conditioned Danny Bonaduce simply destroyed a paunchy, lethargic and totally out of shape Barry Williams.

In a perfect and sane world Superman would never arrive too late to save a fair lady's life, the patriarch of the Cartwright clan would never visit a bordello and a beloved childhood sit-com star would never be humiliated on national TV.

If Barry Williams can come to such an ignoble end, what hope is there for the rest of us? I exceeded the expectations that most people had for me, but now I realize that I walk on treacherous ground. If Barry Williams is forced to throw in the towel to a hotdog like Bonaduce, I'd better walk the straight and narrow, or heaven knows what grievous fate will befall me.

Please send me your comments and suggestions: rreyes4966@aol.com

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