I was recently recovering from an operation and with some spare time on my hands I started to re-watch Home Improvement. I've not seen the show since I was a child and watching it as an adult, I found it just as enjoyable but from a totally different perspective. This time, now I'm a mother, I see things much more through Jill's eyes.
One element I wanted to explore was the close age-gap between Brad and Randy. A 13-month age gap is very close and (hypothetically!) would have been very challenging for Tim and Jill. I started writing a story about this (and I might finish it and post it) but whilst I was doing that my brain started to think about other scenarios that might have taken place when the boys were younger.
This story is set when Jill is trying to cope with new-born Mark and the two older boys are three and four (I wasn't sure what the exact age gap was supposed to be between Randy and Mark, so I just went with the three-year age gap between the actors) There are some references to the earlier story that I'm currently writing (spoiler alert!) but I hope this little story works on its own. It's a bit of how Randy became the character we see in the show.
It's probably a bit domestic and 'cutesy' compared to the real Home Improvement so I can only apologise for that. I guess I'm a mom and although my own kids are older now I can't help but see things through that lens! I hope it's not too boring.
I also apologise for any mistakes. I'm British-American and hopefully haven't slipped too much into UK colloquialism. I think my spell checker is also set to British-English…oops. Anyway, hope you enjoy….
Disclaimer: I do not own the copyright to any of these characters.