I have a big black rectangle on my wall. It used to be a television. But since it doesn’t televise anything anymore, it is now just a black rectangle. If I was my Great Grandmother, I could crochet a cozy for it to pretty it up a little.
I canceled our service. I’ve known it was going to go off for a while because I had to wait for the finale of Design Star on HGTV (which was this past Monday and congrats to Meg!). I can waste some serious time watching HGTV. “I just have to see which house they pick.” “I want to see if the people like it.” “I want to see if they can meet their deadline.” “I want to see how they made that.” And three hours later, I didn’t go to bed early, write another chapter on my novel or fold the laundry.
I used to watch a lot of tv. When I was a kid, my life revolved around tv. I RAN home from school to catch certain shows. If tv rots your brains and ruins your eyes as my Grandma would warn, then I should be a blind drooling mess.
I convinced my husband we should go without tv one summer. We didn’t bother consulting the kids, knowing consensus would not be reached. We stretched it till Christmas and I swear the kids wept when they unwrapped the cable box.
So, I’m doing it again. I will miss HGTV. Oh, House Hunters International, how I loved thee. I will miss TCM. I’m sure they’ll do the Cary Grant tribute and I’ll miss the whole thing. And yes, I will miss Bravo and some Housewives. I will miss the Today show. I will miss whatever Oprah is going to do next.
But, really, I hardly ever watched the thing.
I quit watching television in high school when I got so involved in school activities. I found that once I didn’t know when any particular shows were broadcast, I neither thought about watching them nor did I miss them.
We had basic cable when we moved into this house. Sometimes when I was eating dinner by myself, I might turn the TV on and flip the channels. I knew that if I reached the scrambled porn channels at the end of the cable stations, there was nothing worth watching and turned it off.