Henry, say it isn't so.

We all have secret little measures that we use to guide and gauge our lives as we make our own journey along the path from birth to death.  They are hidden signposts that measure our progress in our personal journey through life.

Henry Winkler "Fonzie"

One of mine can be found in a very auspicious place.  It is a face I used to watch along with much of America from the dinner table.  One night a week I remember turning around a TV cart with our color TV to face our dinner table while we ate.  So much for idyllic family communication right?  The show was Happy Day's and each week we would tune in to follow the antics of Richie, Potsie, Ralph Malph and of course, Henry Winkler aka The Fonz.  Happy Days ran from 1974 to 1984 and was a kind of generational show that in truth was simple minded and stupid.  Near the end of the shows run the Fonz traveled to California to jump over a shark pen with his motorcycle spawning the phrase "jumping the shark."  It is the point when a television series runs out of ideas and dies before your very eyes.

Robert Wagner

Still, Happy Day's ten year run spanned much of my youth.  It carried me from the tender age of seven to seventeen.  At one point I even remember capturing the autograph of one of the characters Erin Moran, when she visited Alaska for an Epilepsy fund raising campaign.  There were many other shows like Happy Day's in the 70's.  It was a time when television offered a scant few channels and most of America focused on the same experience.  Today hundreds of channels pull peoples attention in so many directions there is little programing commonality.  In the pre-cable days we all went to work and school knowing there was a one in three chance we actually watched the same thing the night before.

Senior Wagner

As the 80's came about I remember watching television and seeing more and more of the stars of those 70's sitcoms selling products designed for senior citizens.  They were becoming older themselves and they matched the identity of their market.  Buddy Ebsen aka Barnaby Jones and Robert Wagner told us about Life Alert and prescription medications.  They sold us life insurance and special senior care policies. For the generation that grew up watching them, they were now contemporaries and sympathetic figures.  The young and dashing Robert Wagner, once the husband of the beloved Natalie Wood was now a sympathetic figure selling to the people that once shared his youth.  In truth it didn't really impact me.  After all, I was a young man when these guys were playing men in their 50's on TV.  When you are young, age seems to run in simply two categories, young and everyone else who are old.

Henry Winkler

This morning I was sitting eating a blue berry muffin and drinking a cup of coffee.  My son was preparing his things for school.  On the television was a morning news/talk show and I was getting my daily hit of politics.  Suddenly on the TV their was a grey haired man selling long term care insurance to seniors.  He spoke for a moment and then the commercial changed to policy details.  I looked up and couldn't believe what I saw.  I grabbed the remote and ran the DVR backwards to have another look.  I soon found that my eyes had not deceived me.  The face before me was one as familiar to me as Robert Wagner had been to my parents.  For my son, it was simply an old man talking about something he didn't care about.  He didn't give it a second look.  For me however, the image before me sent a chill down my spine.  It was looking at me through my 52 inch flat screen TV mounted on the wall and verified through a rewind of my digital video recorder.  The man before me was Henry Winkler.  Henry frigging Winkler! This was a man of my youth.  A model of my own.  The one I copied when I went to school and said "heyyy."  He was the man I once knew simply as "The Fonz."  I told my son, "someday you will understand when Harry Potter is selling Depends adult diapers."