The Ones Who Live | 1x03 - Bye

one of my favorite worst things to Think About are the ways herb’s casually neglectful childhood sometimes just....surfaces in the every day world of his life now. and since his whole shtick is my childhood was perfect my father is basically god and i have absolutely no parent issues idk what ur talking abt, he winds up having to flail, having to learn on the way down, and try to keep up a cover that he knew all along. which, usually, doesn’t work, and just makes it all the more sad. here’s a few examples i’ve thought of because i don’t love myself:

someone around the station gets stuck with something metal and comments they might need a tetanus shot. herb was definitely never taken to the doctor’s for a checkup and regular vaccinations as a child, and since he works daytime hours lucille takes the kids while he’s at work, so he literally has never had a shot and he doesn’t fully understand what vaccines are, aside from cultural osmosis, so he asks in telling confusion, “what’s that supposed to mean?” @piper-aileen-lenox specifically, thnx for making me think of this and ruining my life xx

when herb and lucille moved in together (i imagine they were engaged but maybe not married just yet) lucille made it clear to her rather sexist fiance that she was expecting him to tow the line around the house just as much as her, which he agreed to, except when she asked him to do the grocery shopping thinking that was a harmless thing he could do (not like she’d trust him to actually get the dishes clean or fold her clothes so they don’t wrinkle). they almost never had food consistently in the house growing up and if they did eat full meals, they only had the food for THAT MEAL around because 1. herb sr. and ruby (herb’s parents) lived an erratic lifestyle of little to no money or a whole lot of money but only for a second because it was burning a hole in herb sr.’s pocket, and because 2. ruby quickly learned spending money on food ahead was pointless because either herb sr. hecked off somewhere w/o warning and it went bad, or his deadbeat friends hung around and ate it all, so she only bought for that day if they had the money for anything. but since no one was ever around to TEACH herb anything and he figured most things out on his own, herb doesn’t understand all this and he literally thinks you’re not supposed to by food until you run out or that you have to throw out whatever you have left at the end of the week because....... who knows ???? that’s just what he thought. it caused multiple arguments early into herb and lucille’s relationship before she figured it out and explained it to him because he didn’t know well enough to ask.

when herb and lucille’s first child, bunny, was born, he had to be shown how to hold a baby by the doctor. he had literally never held or even interacted with a baby before until that moment. he had no siblings (that he knew of), he had no friends as a child because if he wasn’t the bully he was the target and he was an ass just like dear old dad so no one liked him anyway, and he had 0 other family. lucille realized in that moment as she watched his palpable confusion when she extended their newborn child to him that he was going to have a lot of learning and growing to do. she hoped he was ready for it.

god that time there was a station fam barbecue early into herb’s wkrp career and someone, maybe mr. carlson, is like ‘WHO WANTS TO BE THE GRILL MASTER’ like its a big deal and everyone is like oh it has to be herb bc he’s the newest out of us and hes aware all the men see it as a status symbol and he CAN’T be less of a man than another man bc Ego (tm) so hes like of course im the grill master !!! and then panics for the next thirty minutes because he’s literally never even stood next to a grill let alone used one HOW DOES IT WORK the first fifteen minutes he doesnt even have the gas on rip

when herb was, like, 15, he taught himself how to drive a car because one of his “friends” (peers who was a bully that he called a friend and hung out with to stop also getting bullied but who was still bullying him anyway, herb was just brainwashed into thinking that’s what friendship is) wanted them to go out cruising and herb wanted to be a Cool Guy and not look like a chump so he lied and said he could drive. they got pulled over, because of course they did, and herb got in big trouble for you know, driving w/o a licences. the kicker though is that herb didn’t fucking know you can’t drive without a license or that licenses and road tests and drivers ed were even a THING because he literally raised himself and no one ever  t a u g h t   h i m   a n y t h i n g. anyways his dad got called home to deal with it from wherever he was away at at the time and he got in big trouble for interrupting dear old dad’s work anyways so :) what a healthy family

surprisingly, herb DID know how to cook the basics. grilled cheese, pasta, stir fries, a couple casseroles. lucille asked him about it because he was always such a Gender Roles (tm) type of man who wouldn’t even wear a brighter shade of red than like. maroon. in case it got loosely contaminated with the concept of the color pink and he’d have to change his name and move to alaska. so why was he doing a “ womans job “ (cooking) and herb just looked confused and said “what, guys don’t cook?” she told him that no, they usually didn’t and would have laughed at her if she tried to make them, and he laughed awkwardly and absently stirred the pot on the stove and shrugged in mild confusion. “that’s weird. if i didn’t cook i’d have... starved, i guess.”

the bad news is his cooking wasnt GREAT and lucille was happy to take over because again.........self taught. and he has one (1) brain cell so. not Great

LITERALLY DIDN’T KNOW ALL CLOTHES DON’T HAVE TO BE DRY CLEANED. his dad literally wore clothes that had to be dry cleaned Every Day (and we wonder why the tarlek family was short on the food budget god) (and they were ugly clothes too akdhfjfg) and ofc if ruby washed her clothes, it was while herb was at school. he dry cleaned so many clothes that do Not Make Sense to dry clean in college before he slowly figured that out.

did not know what an allowance was. bunny asked him for one and not willing to seem stupid to his swift daughter he told her to ‘ask her mother’, who thought it was hecking weird that her money obsessed husband would say that, so she asked him why and after several long minutes he just shrugged helplessly and said “what’s an allowance?”

don’t even get me started on herb and lucille planning their wedding ( ‘what kind of stuff should we put on the gift register?’ “put on the WHAT?”  ‘what are we going to put on top of the cake?’ “there’s gonna be CAKE?”  ‘i can’t wait for daddy to walk down the isle with me, it’ll mean a lot to him’ “your DAD is gonna walk you down the isle....?? but you’re marrying ME, right?”   ) also herb not knowing the wedding look of the bride is supposed to be a Secret and barging into the room w a question or smth while lucille and her bridesmaids are getting ready, and everyone is hella miffed and he’s like WHAT i’ve seen her naked before and theyre all like THATS NOT THE POINT HERB

herb did Not Know about seasonal allergies. he just........didn’t know. he just thought god hated him and every spring and fall his head sprung a leak. and the whole time he was growing up no one A. listened to him complain about them and put 2 and 2 together, nor B. just taught him about basic first aid stuff in general for that matter he doesnt know shit. anyways, then lucille was like why are you such a tough guy just stop complaining and take some medicine for your stupid allergies and he was like take some what for my what now

ANYWAYS herb’s mom left while he was v young and he doesn’t remember much about her. herb’s dad was literally   n e v e r   home. the people herb’s dad left him with would work for obscenely low amounts of pay or owed herb sr. money and largely used all the money for their own food, drugs, alcohol, or other more unsightly business, and left herb alone to fend for himself. this is the disaster human that that produced, thanks, family dynamics! don’t abandon your children, kids, thanks for coming to my ted talk