Joe Posnanski

I suppose we’ve all had those moments in life when we feel like we’re smack in the middle of a sitcom. Or maybe not. To be honest, I never like it when someone says, quite seriously, that we’ve all experienced something that, frankly, we probably have not all experienced.

This happens all the time, at least to me. I’ll read something or hear someone say something like: “You know that moment after you get really strung out on heroin,the moment when you’re lying under your car wearing a fur parka and thinking about how much you’d like to be a porcupine, and then you get that call from your Uncle, who you know is an Academy Award winning actor, and he asks you if you want to go Branson, Mo., because he just got free tickets, only he wants to walk for some bonding time and you don’t really have good walking shoes and … oh, you know, we’ve all been there.”

I can’t relate. Only it makes ME feel deficient. I feel like, “Am I the only person who hasn’t been there?”

This goes beyond the crazy scenarios. I think its human nature to believe our own experiences are universal. I heard a comedian the other day talking about how older African Americans don’t pine for the halcyon days of the 1950s quite the way so many others do. He said, “No, you never hear two black people sitting on a park bench going, ‘Hey, you remember when we had separate drinking fountains? Why did they ever get away from that? And remember how we had to sit in the back of the bus? Oh yeah, those were the days. And remember when they turned the fire hoses on us? Memories.”

In other words, I have absolutely no idea if you’ve ever felt like you were in a sitcom.

But it happened to me on Thanksgiving; my Dad was sitting at the table talking about the first Thanksgiving to my 6-year-old daughter Elizabeth. He was saying, “And then the Pilgrims and the Indians got together and had a meal and …”

And Elizabeth said: “No Grandpa, it’s Native Americans.”

Dad said: “What?”

Elizabeth said: “It’s not Indians, Grandpa. It’s Native Americans.” Apparently this is what they teach 6-year-olds at school because I have never had that PC conversation with Elizabeth, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t read my Wahoo blog entry since we are still working on three letter words. Elizabeth also learned that Pilgrim daughters had to wash dishes with vinegar and did not even get a stool to sit on. It’s a valuable lesson.

Anyway, my Dad said: “What are you talking about? It’s Indians.”

And Elizabeth, who can be quite stubborn, said: “No, it’s Native Americans.”

And suddenly I looked at the two of them and realized that my Dad was Archie Bunker and my daughter was Gloria. I have no idea how this happened. But I am wondering what character this makes me in my own life.