Cancelled by Beth Blakeslee

By Beth Blakeslee (Age: 34)
Copyright 01-14-2010

I’d never felt so alone in my entire life.

I mean, sure, there were times where I was alone, but not like this. I felt like I’d been dropped into the bottom of a well with no hope of getting out, or stranded on a deserted island with no boat. Locked in the top of a tower with no chance of being rescued by some handsome prince. Absolutely alone.

All this because my favorite TV show, Sailor Moon, had been cancelled and replaced with Webster.

“What on earth are you saying?” I bet you’d say. “It’s just a cartoon, and a bad one at that! It’s too repetitive! You’d have to be five years old to enjoy this show, and you’re what, seventeen?”
And I know that. I’m a teenager, I shouldn’t be watching cartoons. And I know, Sailor Moon is really repetitive. Everyone’s at school, oh no the bad guys are plotting, a monster attacks, and Sailor Moon transforms to save the day. Monster dies, everything is back to normal.

That show was my escape from real life, though. I’d come home from a day of not understanding anything in math class, being picked on for not being one of the ‘cool’ kids, realizing that I’d forgotten to do my social studies homework again, and sitting through an English class where we read out loud and I was the only one who sounded like they knew how to read, and I’d go sit in front of the TV and watch my Sailor Moon tape with the morning’s episode on it. I taped it religiously, every morning, at 8:30 am. I could lose myself in her world, and just forget about who I was while I watched Serena and her friends deal with their lives. And quite honestly, I’d personally rather deal with monsters than going to high school. If I could switch places with Serena, I would. I’d gladly don a sailor suit and zap monsters with Lita, and Mina, and Amy and Raye. Anything to not have to face high school again.

Nobody really understood me and how much I liked this show anyway, not even my friends. Maybe Melissa did, a little bit, since she watched Sailor Moon and was as crazy about it as I was, but she was a freshman, and I was a junior, and the freshmen were a lot more accepting of weirdos. And that’s what I was. A weirdo. A loser. A freak who watched baby cartoons.

Well, this freak needed her baby cartoons. So I’d gotten home from school and taken over the living room TV. It’s not like there was a television shortage in my house – there were four TVs, and only the three of us there- my mom and my sister and I. I popped in my tape, rewound through a half hour’s worth of tape, and hit play.

And Webster came on.

And as I sat there, three inches away from the TV in the living room, and gaped while Emmanuel Lewis and others acted out some cheesy sitcom scene, it hit me.

No Sailor Moon. No Tuxedo Mask, or talking cats. No Japanimation, just Webster.

I’d never felt so alone in my entire life.

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