Thank you for being a friend...
It's true that sometimes, television shows give us great memories. For me, Golden Girls gave me long-running jokes with my mum a la Sophia Petrillo, and a smart, sarcastic English-teacher role model in Dorothy Zbornak. Every once in a while, I look at my close circle of friends and surmise which one of us is Blanche and which one is Rose. The answer isn't always the same - there's a little bit of every Girl in all of us, I suppose!
Reading a little about Estelle Getty's passing today, I was struck by the theme of perseverance. She held low-level office jobs for years, begging her employers not to promote her, so she wouldn't lose sight of her real dream of acting. When she finally landed the role of 80-year old Sophia at the age of 60 (after flunking her screen test twice because she came off too young), she quickly rose from bit character to part of the main ensemble, and won two Emmys.
True, Golden Girls was just a t.v. show. But it was well written, sharp, funny, and poignant, and included an elderly character with a beaded purse wedged into the crook of her arm who is a hard one for a lot of us to forget. After reading more about the woman behind the make-up, I realized that she lived her dream in every sense of the phrase. Kinda makes giving up on something in your thirties seem just plain silly, eh?
You travelled down the road, and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidante.
And if you threw a party!
I-i-i-invited everyone you knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
and the card attached would say
Thank you for being a friend
