'Jon Baker' - played by Larry Wilcox.

Just wanted to point out that this trait isn't necessarily "nature" or "organic"...Sometimes it is "nurture", and is seen quite frequently in children of practicing alcoholics and/or children of the untreated mentally ill . . .

The life of a child of a practicing alcoholic or untreated mentally ill person DOES seem out of their control...really it IS out of their control...So they learn to adapt by watching the behavior of others in the household - this is how they determine how they feel - how they behave - what is acceptable in the household for that day...This way of living often creates a highly intuitive person, but at a high cost...All of their own personal power is given to others...This way of living sets them up to exist on the whims/opinions of others...Who they are IS determined by others...Compliments send them soaring, and by the same token criticism reduces them instantly to the lowest of lows...

I honestly believed that life "just happened" to me - because really, that had been my experience in living with a father with Bipolar Disorder that remained unmedicated - well except for "self medication" with alcohol...It embarrasses me to admit that I didn't understand something as simple as "your choices make your life", but it was true...

I grew up believing that I had the power to make my father angry and to break my mother's heart. I thought that I was supposed to be perfect, and that if I was not, I was causing the people I loved great pain. I grew up believing that something was wrong with me because I was human. I grew up believing that I had power over other peoples feelings - and they had power over mine.

In my codependence I learned to be enmeshed with other people - to not have healthy boundaries that told me who "I" was, and that I was a separate person from them. I had to become hyper-vigilant in childhood. I learned to focus on trying to interpret what my parents and other authority figures were feeling in order to try to protect myself. As an adult, I unconsciously tried to manipulate people - by trying to be what they wanted me to be if I wanted them to like me, or trying to be either intimidating or invisible if that seemed the safest course. I had no real concept of being responsible for my own feelings because I had learned that other people were responsible for my feelings - and vice versa. I had to learn to start defining myself emotionally as separate from other people in order to start learning who I was.

I was not able to start seeing myself as separate in a healthy way (I had always felt that I was separate in an unhealthy way - shameful and unworthy) until I started to see that I had been powerless over the behavior patterns I learned in childhood. Since my behavior patterns, my behavioral and emotional defense systems, had developed in reaction to the feeling that there was something wrong with me, I had to learn to start taking power away from the toxic shame that is at the core of this disease. Toxic shame involves thinking that there is something wrong with who we are. Guilt - in my definition - involves behavior, while shame is about our being. Guilt is: I did something wrong; I made a mistake. Shame is: I am a mistake; something is wrong with me.

He and I had both become aware that his craving for approval and admiration has been way out of control for a long time, and while it doesn't excuse his A, he has chosen to start getting help for it but had no idea how to even define it let alone get help.

On another note, I am deeply hurt at the scorn and derision exrpessed by Mark and Pep in response to my heartfelt sharing of my horrible teenage Satuday night television experiences. Just saying.

Har - t - har

Pep, back to that whole "Fred" stand-in thing.....

Why would actors need stand-ins for a show like 'Love Boat'. Not a lot of guys leaping off of buildings, and despite the title of the show, certainly not anything of a "gratuitous" nature....

Just wondering'.....

TB

I nominate this one for BEST TV SHOW THEME MUSIC