I haven't bought the first season of Welcome Back Kotter on DVD, but just seeing it on a routine trip to Target, Gabe Kaplan and the Sweathogs smiling out at me in the same head shots used as reference art on the lunchbox and Thermos, produces an almost overwhelming sense of nostalgia in me. Or maybe, nostalgia for nostalgia.
In the summer of 1995, Nick At Nite broadcast what they called "block parties"--six episodes of one sitcom back to back, a different series every night. Friday nights were Kotter nights. And nearly every Friday that summer found me at my mom's apartment. She'd prepare a fairly elaborate meal--an Indian dish, perhaps, or some old Yugoslavian favorite she'd read about in The New York Cookbook--and we'd settle in for three hours of Kaplan Magic.
I'd turned thirty as that summer began, and you'd think a single thirty-year-old would have better things to on a Friday night than watch old sitcoms with his mom. Sadly, in my case, you'd be wrong.
And really, what could I have been doing as important as spinning this safe little cocoon for myself, aided by this audiovisual time capsule of my life--Jesus--twenty years earlier? Kotter, with its nonstop references to Ford and Carter, WIN buttons and Bicentennial Minutes, somehow brought my ten-year-old self to life, happily reminding me of a time and place seemingly long gone. Better, taking this trip in Mom's company, it was like actually being there, the effects of time easily erased, I could be safe and happy and ten forever.
Such a dream is impossible to entertain now. That summer is itself twelve years gone, and of course, Mom is gone, too. What tattered remnants of innocence might remain if I watched Kotter now? Would its tacky sets, corny jokes and mellow John Sebastian theme song work their old magic? Would I laugh, would I sneeringly wonder why I watched this crap in the first place? Or would I sit helpless, my body wracked with uncontrollable sobs?
