Happy Days

Happy Days Remember that old television show" Happy Days?” Well, when I was in the fifth grade I remember thinking, "My family is like ‘Happy Days’." We were happy and there was plenty of laughter and love to go around. Furthermore, like the television show, there were plenty of struggles and some kind of dilemma to solve before the night was over. No matter the problems the day may have brought, I always went to bed feeling happy, safe, and loved. Unlike the majority of kids in my fifth-grade class with broken homes, I just knew that my parents would be together forever. After reading Bradshaw on: The Family by John Bradshaw, I can see now that I may not have had a perfect family. My mom and dad got married in 1962 when she was just 16 and my dad was 23. She was in high school and he was in the Marines when they met, fell in love, and got married. My dad got out of the Marines just before the Vietnam War and went to work for Union Pacific Railroad. They were married two years before they decided to start having kids. My brother Shawn was born first, then me, and last but definitely not least, my little brother Bobby. We were all two years apart. We grew up in a small house on five acres out in the country. There, my mom had plenty of room for her horses and my dad had plenty of room to groom my brothers into great athletes and dirt bike racers. We were like the average all-American family. We were taught to be proud of our country, to respect our elders and to do as we were told. We enjoyed sports, picnics, the drive-in movies, walks on the beach and trips to Disneyland. We would get together with family friends to barbeque every Fourth of July and set off fireworks. We went camping every summer. We flew kites in March when the wind would start to blow and waited up for Santa to come every Christmas Eve. We watched the ball drop with Dick Clark on television every New Years Eve. Sometimes on the weekends my parents spent time with friends playing cards and

Cited: Bradshaw, John. Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-esteem. Deerfield Beach, FL: Health Communications, 1996. Print. Rich, Charlie. The Most Beautiful Girl. Charlie Rich. Rec. Dec. 1973. Sun Records, 1973. Vinyl recording. Satir, Virginia. Conjoint Family Therapy. 3rd ed. Palo Alto: Science and Behavior, 1983. Print.