I have been thinking a lot about how I was brought up, and it is my considered opinion that in a lot of cases my parents got it right. (I am also pretty sure that in a more than a few cases they got it right because they got lucky, but that is not the point here.) Am I the only person who has this? Please tell me there are other judgy people out there who also occasionally catch their brain saying, “Wow. That would NEVER have flown with MY mom,” in a really arch tone of voice...
I harbor this snotty superiority on more than a few issues, frankly. I am disdainful of inappropriate behavior regarding one’s one’s family -- completely blowing off out-of-town visitors, only getting in touch with people to make announcements of occasions where giftage is expected, snubbing a relative because they married a shrewish whore, etc. I resent the hell out of brats with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, whether it stems from running around with spoiled rich kids or it comes from actually being a spoiled rich kid. I dislike it when people with problems hold the rest of the world at fault for those problems when in fact it would be quite simple to STFU and redirect all that whining energy into figuring out a way to just fix the damn problem, already.
But here is the weird and self-loathing part: I am not above turning this sneering condescension upon myself and the job I am doing, in many respects.
Most often, this issue surges in my brain regarding television. See, I was one of those freak children who did not have a TV, for the most part. We had one until I was about 4 and then it died and we didn't get another one for years. It was one of those giant pieces of furniture, a big heavy wooden cabinet with what seemed like a huge screen that was probably about 18 inches, and I honestly don't remember if it was color or black and white. I also don't know why we had a TV in the first place, given how long it took to get another one. It must have been a gift. I watched Sesame Street and the Electric Company and Zoom. I watched just enough Mr. Rogers each day to ascertain that, yes, he was still a sap and yes, my mother would still go into hypoglycemic shock if she had to listen to his closing ditty.
But then our TV died. It was quite the dramatic event. I was up early and not in preschool for some reason, and my mom was sleeping late, as was her wont. I have this strange certainty that I was watching the Wheel of Fortune when this went down, which is possible because it debuted in 1975, but somehow seems unlikely. In any case, I’m sitting there watching whatever is on, and all of a sudden the screen goes snowy and the volume goes out and is replaced by OH MY EARDRUMS LOUD STATIC. I leap across the room to turn it down (that's right, kids, you had to get off the couch and go to the set to adjust the volume! And to change the channel! And to turn it on and off!) because I know my mother will bolt out of her bedroom to kill me if the TV wakes her up.
And then I see smoke wafting out of the channel dial. And then I smell … something.
And I sprint into my parents’ bedroom howling for my mother to get up get up get up the TV is on fire and I don’t know what to doooooooo.
I have a vivid memory of her being instantly awake (unheard of,) and then a fuzzier memory of her dragging this monster TV carcass away from the wall and that a lot of towels and baking soda was involved.
The TV was dead. Long live (someone else's) TV. And we didn’t get another one for a very long time. Until I was 10.
My father, who has a penchant for sticking random symbols in strange places, taped a photo of Howdy Doody to the picture tube. (I did not know who Howdy Doody was. I'm surprised I do now, considering the first time I saw him was after I had any way of seeing him, so to speak. But then, I also did not know until years later that it was a photo of Hitler my father had glued to the center of our rotary phone so that when you spun the dial it looked like he was smiling. I am still trying to figure out the story behind the American Indian sticker that spent so many years on our refrigerator that eventually my mother had to paint over it because she couldn’t scrub it off. But I did know who it was that stuck Indiana Jones’ face over that of The Young Prince on his Little League refrigerator magnet.)
It is overstating to say I **NEVER** watched TV. We did not live in a cave in Palau, after all. I had friends with TV sets, and I would burn my retinas at their houses until they got in trouble. All my Brady Bunch viewing occurred at my friend Kristin's house around 4 p.m. on schooldays. My grandparents had a TV that I watched quite a bit when I would go visit them in the summer. And every Christmas my parents would rent one so they could watch college bowl games and I could see the holiday cartoons. I have fond memories of getting up verrrrry early for the week or so that box would be in our house and just soaking in anything that happened to be on, from Romper Room to Hazel. Frightful stuff, really.
And then, when I was 10 or so, in what I have to assume was a massive victory for my father, my parents went out and bought a television. Our very own, full-time, color TV. WITH CABLE. So I went from zero to 60 in a day. HBO! WGN! Plus the networks! Fan-fracking-tastic! I spent the summer getting up early and watching TV until my mom would roll out of bed around 10 and kick my pasty ass out of the house with an admonishment that I could get some sun or I could learn some algebra. I made up for lost time in very random ways: Bozo. I Dream of Jeannie. Alice. Green Acres. I think if my mom had harbored any suspicion as to what I was watching, she would have chucked the thing right out the window.
There is, however a whole swath of TV viewing that is still sort of mysterious to me. I think I was 21 before I saw an episode of Happy Days. I was aware of Mork and Mindy as a cultural thing giving rise to Robin Williams and rainbow-striped suspenders, but to this day I’m pretty sure I’ve only seen three episodes and I couldn’t possibly tell you what happened in them.
Given all this, you will understand why I more than occasionally shudder and grimace at How Very Much television gets watched in my house today. Sports. What feels like lots and lots and LOTS of sports. Baseball, with the cable baseball package so we could watch baseball from noon to 2 a.m. if we were so inclined. College football on Saturdays, again with the cable package so we can start watching at 9 a.m. and quit at 2 a.m. Pro football on Sundays. Golf. Basketball. La la la. I remember as a small child the soundtrack to my after-school hours was the record player and my father listening to AM radio news while he did the dishes. I am pretty sure my kid is growing up to the dulcet tones of Jerry Remy. I guess it could be worse. I think I’d have to slit my wrists if it were Joe Morgan every night.
And then, where NYAB has sports, I will be upstairs futzing around with work or books or ironing or whatever, while half-watching cooking shows, or home redecorating shows, or how to make hats from beer cans shows.
That is, I will be watching if the YP hasn’t already set up camp. Oh, the YP. All children’s programming, all the time. Disney. Noggin. Sprout. And DVDs up the wazoo, predominantly Star Wars and Indiana Jones. In fact, we probably spend a lot more time watching DVDs than actual TV. The only “program” we watch with any sort of regularity is House. And even that we watched the first 2 seasons on DVD and missed half of the third season before we figured out what time it was on.
So, yes, I get depressed when I think of how much the TV is on. And I get more depressed when my kid sees movies of books he is too young to read yet, like the Narnia series and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, because it is only cementing an opinion he already seems to have that books are better read after you have seen the movie. I made him wait to see the first Narnia movie until after he had read the book, and I am not sure what I accomplished there as I don’t think he understood much of what was going on in the book and he ate the movie up with a spoon. And yet, I hate this. I want him to read the books and see the action in his head and get very involved in the literary landscape. And then he can see the movie later and have it not measure up. I don’t even know why I want this, exactly – it is like I’m all rah-rah about the idea of setting him up for disappointment. What kind of parenting is that?
Further, at this point it’s rather a losing battle to eschew TV. We have three of the bloody things. Granted, one is in the basement and is not hooked up to cable though it is hooked up to a DVD player that is completely defective and skips whole scenes and the room is too cold and there is no furniture down there to snuggle up and watch movies – but that will probably not stop me from popping in DVDs to watch while I space out on the treadmill over this winter once Dawson’s Creek creeps to the top of my Netflix list.
But still. I grew up with no TV. And in some ways it’s a badge of honor. But it does leave me vulnerable to the worry that my kid will grow up to be Martin Tupper.
