A few weeks ago, I was talking to my roommate about a video of a football or NBA player asking a kid if he watches cartoons, with the kid not knowing what they are. It made me think about the shows I grew up watching; they weren’t your typical Disney and Nickelodeon shows, but a mix that included those, along with telenovelas, K-dramas, Philippine series, Chinese dramas, and Indian productions.
The funniest part of growing up with these shows is that I wasn’t allowed to watch TV from Monday to Thursday nights, and most of them aired on those days. My mom was very strict about it. The only time I could watch TV during the school week was during El Clásico with my uncle and his friends, and even then, I could only watch until halftime. Most of these shows weren’t child-friendly, but they taught me a lot.
I don’t think kids today would appreciate my screen time routine or understand how quickly I had to run from the bus stop after school on Fridays to catch the last episodes of the week. I had a schedule for all the shows I planned to watch on weekends, including Disney and Nickelodeon, after finishing all my homework for the week. Then I’d catch the last episode of the Indian series we were watching at 6 pm, since it was scheduled Monday through Friday, with a break for dinner with my mom and to make sure my sibling didn’t take the remote.
We’d catch up on the 8 pm telenovela series and any other ongoing shows. My favorite memory was watching the Korean drama Scholars Who Walk at Night at 9 pm. It was creepy, but I loved watching it alone. I don’t think my mom minded if I was in bed by 10 pm.
Saturdays were the ultimate catch-up days. I would finish my chores early in the morning, and if I didn’t have tutoring, my siblings and I would gather to watch replays of all the episodes we missed during the week. It was the only time we weren’t fighting over who got to control the TV. We would have snacks and talk about how the show was going.
Saturday mornings were for watching Dream High and Sam and Cat, while afternoons were for rewatching and catching up. Sundays were the trickiest; we would go to church in the morning, then come back home to catch up on all the shows we missed during the week. I would sprint back home to lie on the couch and watch, because my friends weren’t allowed to spoil them for me.
It feels weird talking to my friends about this because our childhoods sound so different. We watched Disney cartoons and Nickelodeon together, but she doesn’t know what Telemundo is or any telenovelas that aired between 2012 and 2020. These shows are still a big part of my life, but the experience isn’t the same now that I can watch them whenever I want, and they don’t hit the same anymore. I think it’s unbelievable that most of my childhood was shaped by watching telenovelas, Korean dramas, and Indian shows on weekends.