Living in a Bottle Full of Wishes

The '60s "I Dream of Jeannie" TV show turned 50-years-old earlier this month, and I was a fan.

My childhood friend Gail Piper and I enjoyed turning her family's corner couch into the bottle that Barbara Eden's character lived in. 

Joyce, Gail's mom, let us pull her high-back dining room chairs near the couch. Somehow we put up sheets over the couch to the windows so we could get in and experience that rounded house feel. Is this why I have a fascination with the tiny house movement? 

Jeannie's apparel and hairdo fascinated us. Gail and I took empty tubes from wrapping paper supplies (because the cardboard was stiffer and the circumference bigger than paper towel rolls) and assembled bee-bop ponytails on top of our heads.

Did we take the bottom of our button-down shirts and tie the ends to show our belly buttons? Maybe. 

We even had bottles that we affectionately dubbed our genie bottles.

Here is mine. 

Yes, I still have it.

This was one of my mom's perfume bottles—and it was empty—we didn't drain it. Now the bottle houses a dried-up rose on a shelf near my jewelry box.

When I stumbled upon "The Today Show" interviewing Barbara Eden about the anniversary of the show, I frantically searched for the hand drawn picture of Jeannie that Gail's mom Joyce drew for me. 

See it there over on the left? I've cherished it all these years. 

I snapped a picture of it and tweeted it. And guess what? Barbara Eden starred it! Well, whoever runs her page did if she didn't.

Now that's a wish that was granted without a request.
 


What television characters did you act out in your youth? Did you ever wish, that just for a day, a show would be true? Do you have any mementos from your childhood make-believe play time?