A Good Memory

A few days ago I was talking with some other people and in the course of the conversation something came up that reminded me of an old episode of The Simpsons, a TV show I used to watch. I brought up the episode, but as I talked about it I was struck by just how long it has been since I last watched The Simpsons regularly. Roughly 14 to 15 years? Has it really been that long? I’m not sure exactly when I stopped watching The Simpsons, but I think it was somewhere around season 13. It wasn’t that I no longer enjoyed the show, but at some point I just stopped watching and never came back. My best guess is that after one season ended I didn’t get around to watching the opening episode of the next season and from there I never got back on the bandwagon. Time passed, The Simpsons slipped into memory, and what had been a regular part of my life slowly faded away.

As I’ve thought over my time with The Simpsons, what’s most incredible to me is the fact that the show is still going after all these years. Several times I’ve considered going back and seeing how the show is doing these days, but every time I’ve decided against it. That’s because, for me, The Simpsons now exists as a special memory from my childhood and teenage years and I think if I started watching the show again it would in some way spoil or diminish that memory. If it was ever announced that The Simpsons was finally coming to an end I might watch the final episode, but at this point I don’t think I’m ever going back to watching The Simpsons regularly. Maybe it’s still a good show, but the memory of what The Simpsons was is more valuable to me than whatever it currently has to offer.