I grew up different...

Will & Grace, Friends, Dharma & Greg, and Seinfeld, all of these shows are fantastic sitcoms each of which began its run at some point in the 1990's, and each of which detailed the everyday problems of different groups of friends and/or lovers, all of whom were adults. 

Growing up, apart from playing GameBoy and hating school, I spent the majority of my time watching all these shows, immersing myself into the lives of these inhabitants of TV Land. For a half an hour at a time I befriended and/or fell in love with all these wonderful characters even though I had no true understanding of the situations they found themselves being pulled into, but I wanted to, I wanted to understand so bad, so I did what I could, I started acting like an adult. I figured maybe if I hung around adults more if I payed more attention to their conversations, their reactions, their beliefs, that maybe I'd be able to understand what was going on better. All the exposure into the world of adults led to a change in me, in fact, it led to one of the two biggest changes that occurred in me over the years. 

By the time I was 12, I was beginning to understand life better, I was beginning to understand people better, I was going through a sort of intellectual puberty that wouldnt hit most people I knew for another six or seven years, an intellectual puberty that still hasn't arrived for some 20+ year olds I know today. It was strange because from that point on I started analyzing most people I met in order to better understand people as a whole, in order to, going back to the original story, better understand the problems of all the people I met in my favorite sitcoms.Unfortunately once I finally understood, I also came to understand that these new intellectual and analytical skills I had acquired, basically, for the sole purpose of understanding my favorite sitcoms, were complete and utter overkill, it hit me that these were just sitcoms, just a form of entertainment for those who wanted to escape to a place much like the place they were trying to escape from, except that the new place was a lot funnier. 

Basically what I'm saying is that the pseudo-intellectual, über-critical, cynical, apathetic, understanding, kind-of knowledgeable person I am today is partly due to the need to understand the antics of my "friends": Will, Grace, Jack, Karen, Ross, Joey, Chandler, Phoebe, Monica, Rachel, Dharma, Greag, Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine. Thank you all, though it may seem a bit too strong of a feeling for fictional characters, I love you all, dearly.

-JollyOldDro