Valentine’s Day And The Fresh Prince
Here’s hoping that you had a nice, relaxing Valentine’s Day.
It appears that the weatherman couldn’t have been more wrong about the forecast. The weather was actually quite comfortable in southern California. In between celebrating the wife’s birthday and Valentine’s Day I managed to squeeze in two trail runs in as many days. When the rain does finally arrive I plan to spend my days in the gym, so it’s all good.
Not to get all non-sequitur on you, but for no apparent reason reason I’m been thinking about The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air recently, and something’s been bothering me about the show’s premise for the past three days. If the Fresh Prince and his mother lived in the projects, and the Fresh Prince had an extraordinarily rich aunt who lived in a wealthy and prominent neighborhood of Los Angeles, why would his aunt let her sister live in such a squalid, dangerous location?
It seemed that his mother and her sister were on good enough terms to let the Fresh Prince live with the aunt apparently with no conditions attached. If they were on such good terms, why couldn’t his aunt kick a few bucks his way, helping he and his mother escape from a strangling life of targeted, criminal, gang-related violence?
I mean, here’s the aunt who’s dripping with jewelry, three self-centered kids, a powerfully-connected husband who happens to be a well-respected high-ranking judge, a smarmy butler, gardener, and an unknown number of servants lurking in the background performing a variety of tedious tasks all in an effort to keep her comfortable in the lifestyle to which she’s accustomed. Floating in a pretentious sea of haute culture and callous celebrity, his aunt couldn’t lift the three fingers it takes to write a check that could change the life of an extremely intelligent, grounded, good-natured child that deserves the opportunity to excel beyond his wildest dreams, breaking the cycle of turbulence and strife that his family has no doubt experienced for generations?
This is, after all, family. No?
