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I finished watching all that exists of CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother this week. It is yet another in the long line of shows that I saw once on an airplane and thought, “maybe this is a good show, but eh, not really worth it,” and then a few months later, Paul, who flies a whole lot less often than I do suggests that I should watch. For the record the only other show currently on this list is Scrubs, but I think that the list will continue to grow. It’s a good, fun show about young people in an apartment in New York. But it is a story of the past told in agonizing detail by a grown man to his teenage children. Obviously the story is of how he met their mother. There is a movie out now, Definitely Maybe, which has the same premise. And I would be seeing it tonight instead of blogging about it if I knew anyone who would go see it with me.

In the show, he started his story many, many years before he met his children’s mother. This seems like an excuse to tell all these self important stories about all the girls who might have been their mother and all of his other super cool youth antics. I’m not saying I’m planning to subject my kids to this kind of story. I was never subjected to this kind of story. But it is a good way to tell all of these stories that stay for the most part locked away by social norms. Telling the story is what appeals to me. In 10th grade religion class we had to write sort of an autobiographical spiritual analysis of out whole lives, and then read it in front of the class. This was scary, but people seemed to take it not as lightly as other religion class assignments, and though embarrassing details were in almost everyone’s papers, to my knowledge, none of them left the room. Anyways, this made me hit upon the idea that it’d be fun to, at some point, find someone else and do pretty much the same thing, going back and forth in parts. Vearing on side tracks often, but always coming back to the core story. This is exactly what the show does. Oh, and the show is hilarious, and the girls on it are hot; that all helps.

The good news is that How I Met Your Mother will return from the strike this season with 9 more episodes (for a total of 20, only 2 short of a normal season for them). The new episode will air on March 17th, so only a month or so to go!