Free Melissa Explains It All: Tales From My Abnormally Normal Life by Melissa Joan Hart Page A

Clarissa ’s fourth season, we learned the show would end. I knew I’d miss everyone, but I was turning eighteen and anxious to start my next adventure. At this wrap party, “Melissa” was especially heartbreaking. It was now our swan song.
    Being Clarissa was a great learning experience for me. I can’t exactly say that she knew it all, but the character sure did teach me a lot as I internalized my lines. She repeated famous quotes by people like the Dalai Lama and Queen Latifah, way before people did this on Twitter. During one of the first episodes, I had to say something about Tibet, but I’d never heard of this place before, so I said it quickly and rhymed it with the sound a frog makes—“ribbit.” This happened over and over, no matter how often the producers corrected me. (I also got tongue-tied saying “sibling relationships,” which came out “sibwing rewationships.” We must have done fifteen takes before I stopped sounding like Elmer Fudd.) I was even schooled in Wall Street 101. One of my favorite lines in the show was when Clarissa wanted to be an anchorwoman like Jane Pauley and was reporting the day’s news to the viewers. She starts by giving the financial report and talking about the Dow Jones, and then says, “Now who is this Dow Jones guy, and why does he keep going up and down?” I couldn’t have agreed more with this line and Clarissa’s POV as a kid, so my delivery was flawless. At fifteen, I had no idea what the Dow Jones was, and to be honest, I’m still hazy on it.
    It’s hard to let go of something special, but you have to know when to move on. We shot the pilot for a CBS spinoff called Clarissa Now in 1995, about Clarissa’s internship at a Manhattan paper. After production wrapped, Mitchell and I felt that we didn’t have as much freedom on a network as we did on cable to keep it going the way we liked. I think fans would have been disappointed if it went to air. Same goes for a reunion show. I don’t think it could ever be as fresh or relevant as the original Clarissa was. I don’t even know how I’d play the character now that I’m so much older, and I think it’s better to reminisce about the old days than try to recapture or reinvent them. People are always disappointed with a reunion anyway. Few people like high school reunions, let alone ones on TV. It would make me feel old and fat. And we’d all get that theme song stuck in our heads again.
Na na na na. Na na na na.
All right! All right!
Na na na na na. Na na na na na.
Way cool!
    Guess we know what you’ll be humming for the next two chapters.

 
    Chapter 6
    IS THAT TEEN SPIRIT I SMELL?
    I worked on Clarissa Explains It All from January of 1991 to December of 1993, from fourteen to seventeen years old. This age window is when most teenagers spend 90 percent of their time worrying that if they’re left out of anything—a conversation, a party, a double date—they won’t collect enough memories or feel amply prepared for what comes next. According to Glee, Taylor Swift, and my much younger siblings, navigating high school is a really significant part of being a teen. But bouncing between New York and Florida in high school meant I didn’t have the experiences that I hear all about. Even so, I didn’t miss it, and in a lot of ways, I think I was better off. I was too busy enjoying my early independence.
    I never cared about school-related traditions like homecoming, prom, or football games; I did like junior high dances, but more for the music and dancing than anything else. And while Clarissa ’s stellar reviews meant instant cred to the show’s execs, I liked that I could be part of a great collaboration in another part of the country. When I did miss my family and good Chinese food, I reminded myself that I could make my own decisions in Florida, and that was huge. In Long Island, I never decided when to wake up, what to wear, what to eat, or even how to get out the door with clean hair and teeth. Until