My So-Called Memories

By Nicole V.

“People are always saying you should be yourself, like yourself is this definite thing, like a toaster. Like you know what it is even. But every so often I’ll have, like, a moment, where just being myself in my life right where I am is, like, enough.”
Angela Chase, Episode 13 of My So-Called Life

Angela Chase:
Angsty teen

Do you remember what it was like to be 13? I don’t mean simply remembering old friends or the hideous clothing you wore, but actually mentally transporting back to the specific time and location of your 13-year-old self’s life? Sometimes hearing a certain song can take you places. Sometimes it’s a smell. Watching My So-Called Life again did that to me. I was transported back to Thursday evenings at 8 p.m., watching the show on channel 7 (that was ABC, in case you’re wondering) from my twin sized bed in the poster- and stuffed-animal-adorned bedroom of the house I grew up in. (And there are still a few stuffed animals in there to this day.) It was so vivid that, even though I hadn’t seen these programs in 12 years, I remembered and recited lines of dialogue. It caught me off-guard.

On October 30, 2007, the entire series (which amounts to just one 19-episode season) was re-released on DVD, its initial 2002 release long out of print and near impossible to find. It originally aired in 1994/1995, a time when I was but a budding, brooding teen like the characters on the show. It was my absolute favorite thing to watch and discuss with my friends who were fellow fans. After its demise, I still thought of it fondly and always cherished the soundtrack but I didn’t realize how much I longed to re-watch it until the show’s 15-year-old main character Angela Chase (played by a 13-year-old Claire Danes), with flaming red hair and angsty teenaged eyes, called to me from the shelf in the video rental store one early November evening on my way home from work.

As I watched the series over the span of the next week, I was prepared for that feeling of slight self-embarrassment, the kind that comes when realizing that the importance and weight once given to a piece of cultural memorabilia is often strictly age-specific. This isn’t unlike the same fond humiliation you feel when you discover writings or drawings you might have produced during that same formative age; things that were once so relevant and significant in your life become silly, or just plain bad. Was I expecting this reaction because it was a dated drama revolving around teenagers? Or because I myself was an impressionable teenager when I first watched and loved it? Some parts of the show were definitely cringe-worthy (most notably how visually dated it is—grunge fashion overload!), but I was surprised by how little I was embarrassed, and instead, how earnestly and emotionally I was absorbed in the episodes.

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