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| Marta Kober on Happy Days. |
I grew up during wartime, by which I mean the War on Drugs. Remember that dumb thing? I guess the government officially declared "war" (whatever that means) on mind-altering substances in the early 1970s when soldiers were coming home from Vietnam hooked on dope. But the War on Drugs that I remember started in the 1980s, shortly after Ronald Reagan became president. I think we all remember Ron's wife, Nancy, telling us to "just say no" in some famously ineffective PSAs.
I was in elementary school at the time, and I can say that drugs were not a factor in my life at all. We kids were fairly bombarded with antidrug propaganda, but it was not needed in my case. Teachers would say things like, "We know you kids are under a lot of pressure to smoke pot and pop pills." Wanna bet? I certainly wasn't being pressured to do drugs back then. I wouldn't have even known where to get that stuff if I'd wanted it.
By the time I got to high school in the '90s, students were expected to go through a program called Drug Awareness Resistance Education or D.A.R.E. Drugs were still not a factor in my life because I didn't hang around with cool-enough kids. So D.A.R.E. was just kind of a goof to me. One of my favorite moments of my high school years was when our gym teacher asked the class, "Why do you think they call it dope?" and some wiseacre answered, "Because it's dope." Such a great line. I'm ashamed I didn't think of it.
This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we're covering the obligatory antidrug episode of Happy Days entitled "School Dazed." The plot has Joanie (Erin Moran), now somehow a full-time teacher at Patton Vocational School, mentoring a troubled young student named Jesse (Marta Kober). Marta pops pills at school, causing Joanie to get all up in her business. Speeches are made. Tears are shed. Lessons are learned. You know the drill.
But is "School Dazed" any fun at all? Or is it just another useless sermon? Find out by listening to our latest episode, which is linked below.