remember alf? he's back! in pog form.

there are a lot of things from my childhood that i remember fondly. television is one of these things. as a kid, i especially loved watching reading rainbow and mr. rogers' neighborhood and reruns of the muppet show. but watching these shows today, i honestly can't understand how they held the attention of 5 year old tracy. i mean, they can't even hold my attention now and isn't a person's attention span at it's peak at my age? maybe the internet has corrupted it. but really, why i liked these shows i may never know (although i must admit i still have a soft spot for jim henson, specifically the movie the labrynth).

another show i (thought) i loved as a kid was alf. for those of you who are unfamiliar, alf was an nbc sitcom about an alien named alf who crash landed in suburbia and took up residence with the tanner family. now, this, i can see keeping my attention. but oh how wrong i was.

my sister purchased the first season of alf on dvd for $2 at an estate sale. she's in dc visiting and a couple nights ago we sat down to watch the first episode. after about 10 minutes i turned to her and said 'i don't think i've ever seen this show before' to which she replied 'me either'. i looked it up online and it turns out alf went off the air when i was one year old. there was a very good chance that i really never had seen alf. but i have always remembered loving alf. so what was the deal?

i called our mom, hoping she could enlighten us. turns out we had an alf book when we were kids. it was called alf hides out and it had a little cardboard alf the reader could hide in different places in the book (i think this was inspired by alf's affinity for hiding in the kitchen on the show). it was all coming back to me. i loved that book. i read it hundreds of times. and i fabricated a love of all things alf based solely on this book (i think my brother may have also had some alf pogs). i don't think i even knew that alf was an alien, i think i always assumed he was the lovechild of a bear and an anteater. makes me wonder how many of my other childhood memories are entirely fabricated.

EDIT: my brother did not in fact have any alf pogs, that was also fabricated. i merely remembered it from an episode of the simpsons: