Matt Groening was nervous. He was about to meet with a TV producer. He had been asked to bring drawings for a new cartoon. But Groening had not prepared anything. While sitting in the waiting room, he quickly sketched a family of characters. He gave them yellow skin because he thought it would catch people's attention when they flipped through TV channels. On April 19, 1987, those characters appeared as short clips on a show called The Tracey Ullman Show. Each clip lasted about one minute. The family was messy, loud, and funny. Homer, the dad, was lazy and lovable. Bart was a troublemaker. Lisa was the smartest one in the family. Viewers loved them. The clips became so popular that the network gave The Simpsons their own show in 1989. It became the longest-running American animated series in history. The show has aired over seven hundred episodes and been translated into dozens of languages. All because of a quick drawing in a waiting room.