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I remember it clearly. I was eleven years old and on the cusp of puberty. My hormones were stirring like a gathering storm, and my body was changing rapidly in scary, grown-up ways. Girls, whom I’d previously found "icky" were suddenly...not so icky.
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I’d
look at the blossoming young ladies in my elementary school classroom
and want to (gasp!) kiss them. It was a young boy’s worst nightmare,
even worse than those bad dreams I’d been having about the Sid &
Marty Krofft-invented creatures from "Sigmund and the Sea Monsters"
chasing after me. Girls were way worse than monsters. Girls were real.
What would my friends think? How could I focus on the newest issues of
Uncanny X-Men and New Teen Titans when my mind was swirling with images
of females I’d previously thought gross but now found beautiful?
I was suddenly sniffing my female classmates’ sweet scent instead
of doing my usual, kicking them in their scabby shins.
I
was at a loss. I didn’t know who to turn to. My mother worked several
jobs so she could keep food on the table for her five children, and was
thus hardly ever home. It was then, at the dawn of my manhood, that I
realized how important fathers truly were. And I didn’t have one.
In television terms, my father had been written out of my life when I
was three years old, like James had been written out of "Good Times,"
although my father hadn’t been killed off. One day, he simply went
away and didn’t return. Too bad life isn’t more like television,
or else there would’ve been a sassy maid in my home to help guide
us children, but in real life most families can’t afford a live-in
maid.
So,
which dad did I turn to when I needed advice about girls and sex and my
suddenly-weird body? Why, Steven Keaton, of course, from "Family
Ties." If his aging hippy wisdom was good enough for Alex P. Keaton,
his Reagan-loving, conservative son, it sure as hell was good enough for
me. His sage words helped me navigate through the confusing world of teenage
girls. 
But
my other dads helped too. When my virginity became something I wanted
to shed, I turned to Dr. Jason Seaver from "Growing Pains" for
advice, although I must admit that I didn’t take the abstinence
path quite as long as his son, Mike Seaver, did. 
When
I needed advice about school and college and my future, I turned to Dr.
Huxtable from "The Cosby Show," because, boy, Theo Huxtable
sure was turning into a fine young man. 
But,
of all my many television dads, Mike Brady from "The Brady Bunch"
was my favorite. I wanted (and still want) to be a Brady. Mr. Bradys advice
covered all of life’s many quandaries. I learned from Mr. Brady
about greed and vanity and jealously and fairness, but most of all, I
learned that you shouldn’t play ball in the house.
