About a month ago, right in the middle of what I'm sure was a superb program, the picture tube on our TV died. It was actually quite an entertaining demise - the picture began to squiggle around a bit, then all of a sudden it shrank down to a small colorful circle before disappearing completely, kind of like a Big Bang in reverse. And since this was our only TV, that was that.
Now, here's what I find interesting. At first, as in 'the day it died', I was pretty anxious to replace it. I mean, what are we going to do for that last hour of the day if we have no TV? But we decided to wait a while because we have points on our credit card that we can use to buy a new one. So we applied for the points, and within the week they arrived. In the meantime, though, we went to the Sony store at the mall to check out what was available. We decided that since we watch a fair amount of programming on our computers, it made sense to get a TV with internet capability, so we could stream things like Netflix movies onto our new TV.
Now, as I said, the points arrived, but we have not had the time to return to the store to cash them in, in part due to a recent vacation up north, and in part to general busyness. But in the meantime - in the meantime - we have experienced life without a TV for about a month and we either don't know what to make of it or kind of like it, I'm not sure which. But we don't feel the withdrawl that I felt that first day. In fact, it feels somewhat like a liberation. I think I need to explain.
We had gotten into the habit of turning on the TV after dinner, and first up was a program that Tom always recorded called 'Pardon the Interruption.' I never took to the program (a sports gabfest), so I usually went somewhere else until it was over. But I never realized just how much I HATED this program coming into the house every day until I finished dinner one night and realized I was freed from these 2 guys chatting up sports micro-topics in very loud voices. And I'm sure Tom felt the same way about programs I watched, like American Idol.
I had another moment of enlightenment a couple of weeks ago when I was picking up some soup at a local restaurant and I saw, on their TV, video footage of Tiger Woods and his wife, with 3 bars of text scrolling across the bottom of the screen and one scrolling above. I thought: I just don't want this as a part of my life! Really! No Tiger Woods. No scrolling breaking news reports. I think I'm losing my tolerance for it.
Then today it occurred to me that TV, in recent years, has been more of a source of frustration for me that entertainment. If you think of it, there are about 100 channels, and for the most part, they are worthless. I do understand why - revenues to stations have dipped dramatically because no one can attain the share numbers of yesteryear due to the proliferation of channels people have to choose from. So less money turns into cheap programming (meaning they can't pay talented writers), and things spiral downhill from there. That is why you can flip through 100 channels and not find one thing to watch, which continues to surprise me, and finally leads to frustration.
One last point on this. This past month I have experienced a little of what my life was like in Japan. We had pretty much one channel there - CNN International - and that was it. In addition, we lived in a city where English was not the primary language spoken. So I spent a lot of time with my thoughts. I learned to like this, and found that I could do a lot more reading and writing when my mind was cleared of excess stimuli. In many ways, it was a better quality of life. This hiatus from TV has been a little like that.
With all of this, you probably think we'll never get a TV again. And you would be wrong. We've got our points, we'll get our TV, but it does have us thinking about using it differently. Tom has characteristically decided not to watch any TV any more even when we get the new set. And I do appreciate this, as I don't think I can take PTI even for one minute more. But I do like to watch some things, particularly movies. So our compromise says that I'll wear headphones when watching, so Tom can work nearby without being disturbed. And since this is a flat screen instead of a traditional TV, I'll be able to close the doors of the cabinet when it's not in use. We'll see how this goes. I have to concede now that I'm glad the tube decided to die....we've been given a chance to shake things up a bit, and that's not all that bad.
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