"Friends" and family

It's been interesting to watch all the hoopla over the last episode of "Friends" (did you hear? It's going off the air!) and realize that the show started just a couple of months before we went to Russia to adopt our kids. I can barely remember those heady days when I used to actually watch what I wanted when I wanted, and had shows I considered "appointment TV." I was enthusiastic over the first few episodes of "Friends" and another new show that season, "My So-Called Life" (equally worthy of a long run but sadly getting only a very very short one), and probably felt disappointed to think I was going to have to miss episodes while on our mission to Moscow. I may even have set the VCR to tape them, but it wouldn't have mattered because we wound up being overseas for nearly a month instead of two weeks, and by the time I got home with two kids and four weeks of backlogged sleep I was more eager to watch kiddie shows that would buy me a nap -- maybe "Sesame Street" or the dreaded "Barney" -- than something intended for adults. So I never really got into "Friends," and while I've followed the toothsome sixsome's antics through magazine articles and "TV Guide" listings, I can't say I have any particular emotional investment in how they all end up. Ironic, though, isn't it, that adoption is part of the final plotline?