You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and what do you get? The facts of life. When the world never seems to be living up to your dreams, suddenly you figure out the facts of life are all about you. This show started out as a spin-off from the show Diff'rent Strokes. On that show Mrs. Garrett was the Drummonds' housekeeper who was offered a job at Eastland School for women as housemother. At the beginning of the show in 1979, the girls that Mrs. Garrett were Blair, Tootie, Nancy, Sue Ann, and Natalie. By 1980, another girl named Jo appeared as a street kid from the Bronx with a rough appearance.

The years passed and Mrs. Garrett became angry that she had been underpaid. She talked to her son Raymond who bought her a run-down store in Peakskill, New York. She reopened it as Edna's Edibles. The four girls moved in and so the show continues. The store was destroyed in 1985 when a fire hit it. Not giving up, Mrs. Garrett and the girls rebuilt it into a new and improved store with a 1950 malt shop appearance and renamed it "Over Our Heads." The next year, Mrs. Garrett got remarried and left the shop to her sister Beverly Ann. The following year would be their last.