Hello to a now-distant friend

Visiting my parents for the holidays means being reintroduced to something I’ve been without for a long time: TV. It’s always a bit of a rude shock—similar, I imagine, to the way it would feel riding a crowded subway after several months living in a quiet lake cabin. Every time I get a fresh dose of TV, it seems louder, brighter, faster, more crass than it did the last time.

Getting off TV happened more or less accidentally for me. I brought an old TV with me to my dorm room when I first moved away in 2005. In the first month of college, I wasn’t watching much of it, because I was busy meeting people and getting to know my new town. Then the old TV up and broke around the end of October, so I wasn’t watching any of it. I couldn’t justify the expense of a new TV then or for the remainder of my time in college. By the time I was in a financial position to do a little spending, I had long beforehand realized how much better my life was without a TV in it. 

Now when I happen to be around it, I find it extremely disruptive. I can’t think, I feel agitated, my sense of the progression of the day gets turned on its head. Funny that I should be so disturbed by something that 10 years ago felt as natural as breathing.

The other day I read that for a few years now, the average American home has had more TVs in it than people. We have 2.86 television sets to 2.5 people. My parents contribute to that absurd statistic. Back in the day, we had four TVs (five if you count the old one in a box that I took to college) and four people. I don’t think anyone ever planned to have enough TVs for each of us to sit in blissful solitude while watching our own preferred programming, but it just kind of happened that way over the years. In 2005 and 2006, my folks got rid of two people—but none of the TVs. Now in this house cable boxes outnumber human beings two to one. 

I’m fortunate at least that my parents are not the type who turn the TV on first thing in the morning and leave it blaring until bedtime. They read, work on projects around the house and in the yard, go on walks, and participate in plenty of creative and thoughtful activities. But from late afternoon through evening, you can bet there will be at least one TV going, and sometimes without anyone even really watching it. It’s at that point that I begin thinking about where in the house I might find some refuge.

Even though I seriously dislike the way TV makes me feel, there’s no denying its magnetism. Last night I was washing the dishes while my dad watched football on his monstrous big screen in the room adjoining the kitchen. I don’t care for football in general, and I especially don’t care for watching it on TV, but I still found myself pausing in my work with soapy hands at my side to gawk at the Colts making a comeback in the last two minutes. When it’s right there in front of me, I can’t help getting sucked in.

It’s almost impossible to keep your eyes off a lit-up TV screen. That’s where the movement and the voice of the room are. The screen seems like the place to be. 

I don’t miss it at all when I’m in my own place, but when it’s in my face and instantly available, I have to make conscious efforts to get the hell away from it and do the things that matter to me. If it hadn’t been for the TV noise filling the house last night, I probably would have written something for this blog. As it happened, I felt intellectually distracted all night, even when I retreated to a quiet room. The TV  had blasted the ideas right out of me. Only now—after a good night’s sleep and in the morning before the TVs come on—do I have the right flow to express myself. 

I can’t really fault people like my parents who retain the habit I kicked so long ago. They live fine lives, and I know it’s hard to see how you might get more out of life by getting rid of something. But I’m grateful that old TV of mine broke so I could learn a bit about living without.