After All

We have to live in a world without Mary Tyler Moore now? Geez, that sucks. Hang in there, Carol Burnett!

Yeah, like there was a chance I grew up in
the U.S. without having ever seen the best
title sequence in TV history.
Source.

Ever since I announced my plans to leave Austin, taking my 30-something newly-single self to a city that didn't have my husband's footprints all over it, with the hope that a job and apartment would turn up when the time was right, I've endured a steady stream of Baby Boomers bringing the Mary Tyler Moore references. "You're Mary Richards!" they said, or "Are you going to get a job at a news station?" or the somehow even less subtle "Do you have a hat to throw in the air?" And then they inevitably follow it up with, "But of course you're too young to know what I'm talking about." Baby Boomers, y'all are lovely and wonderful on a case-by-case basis, but as a group you have a bit of a hivemind thing going on. You might want to look to that.

Anyway. Of course I knew what they were talking about, and while I watched the show when I was too young to really get it, I do own many hats. (Throwability of some of them is unknown.) And of course, it wasn't her iconic hat, it was her slacks that were the critical part of her wardrobe, back in the 60s on The Dick van Dyke Show, when TV execs didn't know that women owned trousers. I have plenty of those, too.

We'll miss you, Mary. Thanks for using your talent to make the world a brighter place. And for wearing such a great hat.