If all of us think back on their teen years, there must be something we were quite self-conscious of, whether that was our big ears, are hair that wasn’t always 100% in place, bushy eyebrows, or some other facial feature or body part. Well, the same thing happened in Mayfield when a girl Wally has a crush on tells him he has a pug nose. It isn’t until after he wastes his money on a contraption that is supposed to straighten out pug noses and turn them into Roman noses that she lets him know she thinks guys with pug noses are cute. He doesn’t feel so bad then.
As for me, the one thing I was self-conscious about was my face, yes, the entire thing. To be more specific, it was just the areas above my cheekbones that would get so dry and cause me to itch and then there’d be flaking, etc. Yes, gross. But it shouldn’t have made me feel like the outcast I thought I was or made myself out to be.
I didn’t realize that my little infirmity did not have to be a stumbling block to having lots of friends. There was a day when I saw a guy in my English class who had the same problem I had. He face was kind of blotchy and flaky and really red. He was talking with girls, people laughed with him and his problem didn’t stop people from liking him.
Just like Wally, I made my problem out to be bigger than it needed to be. Too bad I didn’t have Ward Cleaver giving me good advice. Wally figured out that all works out for the best in the end. Leave it to Beaver hits home to all of us and in some episodes, the show hits closer than home than it does in others.
Great values, morals and lessons can and should be learned from Leave it to Beaver.
Watch it with your kids and especially watch this episode with any teen of yours who happens to be going through a bout of extreme self-consciousness.
