For ol' Olmec

My grandparents used to own a winter retreat in a retirement community in Bradenton, Florida. It was a sunny, well-groomed place where old people speeding around in golf carts used to angrily shake their fists at my brother and I as we rollerbladed around the streets and tried to avoid running into slow-moving alligators that were about as old as the people. We drove down every March break, usually taking about 24 hours to cover the straight line that ran from Toronto to the Orange State. My dad would bring books-on-tape with him from the public library, and he'd listen to these while the rest of us slept in our seats as the car rumbled through New England. On one particularly gruesome trip I can recall waking up in darkness to the sounds of Kathy Bates reading "The Silence of The Lambs". Once we got there, we swam in the old person's pool, shopped in the old person's outlet mall, and lounged on the old person's beach. But mostly we just watched American TV. There was nothing, nothing better than American TV.

We watched Road Rules marathons on MTV, and caught the earliest episodes of Buffy on the WB, and Talk Soup on E! when it was still hosted by John Henson and was still hilarious. But mostly I lived inside Nickelodeon. I may have been a Canadian, but we spent so many March Breaks down south that I considered myself an honorary Nick kid.

So now be nostalgic with me and let's watch an episode of Legends of the Hidden Temple! Please?