In middle school I accomplished an early teen’s near impossibility every day; I would get home from classes, put my shitty raging puberty hormones away for approximately one hour and sit next to my mom in utter peace and silence.
Together, we would watch an episode of “Gilmore girls.”
I was sitting next to my mom when Rory Gilmore got into private school, battled her bullies, failed her first exam, met her first boyfriend, went to college, got arrested and became the editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News.
And when Rory lost her virginity at the end of season four, my mom turned to me and said, “You better not do that until you are in college, or you have to tell me right before.”
“Yeah OK, mom. I would definitely tell you right before,” I remember responding in a sassy hormonal lapse.
Oct. 1, the day “Gilmore girls” triumphantly debuts on Netflix, marks the day I relive growing up.
Where Rory led, I have followed. Yes, that is a reference to the theme song.
As a 20-year-old student journalist, I can confidently say that I am the editor-in-chief of The Badger Herald partly because of a mother-daughter television show that I watched obsessively on ABC Family.
As a pre-teen, something about Rory’s trajectory served both as my career aptitude test and a personality quiz.
She taught me how to fall in and out of love with the bad boys, watch cool movies and read Norman Mailer. Even today, I think of her when I speak up at my internships and avoid making scary caves in The Badger Herald office when things go slightly wrong on production nights.
I learned I would never sacrifice a career in journalism for a college boyfriend and that going up to someone, kissing them and saying “I just wanted to know what that feels like” should really only be said on television by fictional characters — specifically by 16-year-old Lorelei Gilmore.
The people and references in that seven-season television show helped shape many of the beliefs and aspirations I hold today — a sentiment that is most definitely not unique to me.
I met my best friend in sixth grade while reading “Artemis Fowl” during recess. She used to sit on her lunch box, read her favorite passages and I would listen. We wrote notes to each other in “Gnommish” code on our eighth grade field trip to Washington, D.C.
We were self-proclaimed middle school nerds and I didn’t give a fuck. I was weird and geeky and it was totally cool, because Rory and Lorelei Gilmore made having brains, and the rapid-fire use of trivia in every-day conversation, awesome.
When the show ended its run in 2007, I said a bittersweet goodbye to the storylines and the characters, somewhat knowing that even as an eighth grader, I too had graduated with Rory.
And now, as I register for my own college graduation, begin my job search, come to terms with saying goodbye to friends that have become like family — the Paris Gellers and the Lane Kims of my world—I will go back to these episodes and remember those hours on the couch, mom by my side, trying to keep up with the Gilmore girls.
Thanks, Rory. I owe you one.
Real talk though: Jess for life.
