A Tale of Two Parallels

[Smartboy]

Just when I thought that I had written everything that there was to mention about "Samantha's Protest", I flicked on my TV earlier this evening and there was something that reminded me of this episode in, not one, but two ways! I was flipping through the channels and came upon an episode of the "Facts of Life" called "A Different Drummer". The theme of this episode was the character of Blair dating a mentally ******** boy from town. The episode was trying to make the point, that, just because someone happens to be ******** does not mean that he cannot be a fun person to be around and cannot be mainstreamed into the community in some situations. Think of a theme from "All in the Family" done eighties style. This boy who was named Leo already knew how to finger-paint and Blair thought that, with work, he could eventually get to the point to where he could paint with a brush. While the two of them were working together, Leo made a motion with his brush that Blair thought was okay, but that could have been better. Blair used her own paintbrush to demonstrate what to do while saying "like this". The hand that Leo was holding his brush with let me know that he was being played be a left-handed actor. Just like Katie from "Gimme a Break!" was being played by Kari Michaelsen who is a left-handed actress. The fact that a left-handed person was interacting with the right-handed world around him or her is one parallel that I found between the two episodes. I will have to write another paragraph to tell you about the second.

When, Nell, Katie and Julie arrived at the scene a the protest, they made a group decision to become part of it. A few seconds after the three of them decided to support Samantha and her cause, Nell commanded everyone to lock arms. Almost everyone there responded to this order by grabbing the arm of the person on either side of him or her to form a chain. The exception was Katie who was second to last in line. You see, the handsome boy that she liked was at the end of the line and Katie grabbed both of his arms and pressed her body against his. Shame on her! On the other side of Katie was her tough, no nonsensem sister Julie who was watching the whole thing. With one arm wrapped around Samantha's she used her free arm to grab one of Katie's spin her around and said "like this Katie"! Now all of the demonstrators were part of the chain. This is where we come to the second parallel between the two episodes. In both cases, a right-handed character corrected the behavior of a left-handed character by using the phrase "like this". Amazing!