« Here's to a Successful Year of School | Main | Poultry on Thanksgiving »

November 29, 2004

Burning Desire for Television

Growing up I didn't watch much TV. I think.Perhaps I did and all the TV watching rotted the part of the brain necessary for remembering watching TV. However, I've never heard any mention of television's surgical striking capability, so I'm going with the not much TV theory.

I didn't watch much TV mostly because my we didn't have cable in my house. We had antenna. Rabbit ear antenna - not the monsterous tower-type antenna, just regular-old standard issue antenna. This would have been plenty had we lived where I now live, but in the rather sparsely populated sections of the heartland rabbit ears just don't do much. We had 2 channels, ABC and CBS that came from a city over 30 miles yonder. (I never said yonder before, nor did anyone I ever met, but since I'm playing on the backwoods thing here, I figure it works.) Occassionaly, if the planets alligned in just the right way and the wind blew hard enough in just the right direction we got all the sound and half the picture of a PBS station that likely came from the same city half an inch farther north on the map. I guess on occassion I could have watched that too. But why?

All the kids at school talked about recent episodes of their favorite sitcoms and shows from previous nights that sounded really, really intriguing. Their exuberant discussions of plot twists, and comedic hijinx reminded me every day what it was I was missing without even NBC to passively absorb.
At some point I decided to join the discussions. I could go no longer being the outsider without any opinion about the important cultural events. I could tolerate no more to stand amongst my peers on the playground kicking rocks and obviously being looked at as the guy too uncool to watch television. I formulated opinions. I put them on the table. I was respected. I was cool.
Nevermind that the opinions were actually conglomerations of the opinions I heard previously expressed. I voiced something. I duped them, or at least I tried.
At some point I decided it was worthless to go on trying. I gave up. I talked no more about television shows I had never seen.
This did not mean, however, that I stopped watching television. That was by no means the case. I continued to watch television in small, but regular, amounts after school. Reruns of Cheers mostly.
So it still hurt when my mother punished my siblings and me by removing the plug to the television set. That's right. The plug. She left the TV as a constant reminder of what we were to go without and
only took the plug. The (probably already at that time) antique TV had a strange plug that could easily be removed rendering the thing useless.
Or so she thought.

The strange mix of Cheers deprivation and defiance coupled with absolutely no knowledge of electricity fueled me to rig up a makeshift plug and to then use it.
I went down into the basement and found some copper wiring. I cut two short pieces and bared each end. I twisted the wires to the cord left to taunt me and when my mom wasn't home I stuck it into the socket.
I was a little late for Cheers that first day, it started without me, but I was able to catch most of the show before my mom came home. At that point I hopped off the couch, hurriedly undid my invention,
slipped it into my pocket and ran upstairs to pretend I had been doing something non-Cheers related.

Another night my mom left the house during prime time for some rare reason or another and I rigged up the TV again. I grabbed the cord, twisted together some copper and slid under the couch to put the makeshift plug into the socket when a blue flame shot out. I flew back. I'm not sure if it was a result of the flame or if it was a result of my scared-shitlessness, but I flew. I didn't go too far,
however, because I was trapped under the sofa, something I changed in a hurry.
I emerged from the darkness under the couch to a dark house.
The plug I made wasn't something anyone would underwrite, it blew every fuse (and in my house they were fuses, making the situation that much more difficult to remedy) in the house.
When my mom came home she freaked out. She ran around the house frantically screaming both reprimands and worried exclamations, "the house could be on fire inside the walls!" She called up anyone she thought had even the tiniest bit of knowledge about electricity. They all assured her my plug was a stupid idea, but that the house was probably not on fire.
They also must have told her to quit torturing us and put the plug back on the TV, because it was back there in time for Cheers the next day.

Posted by calculatoronfire at November 29, 2004 10:09 AM

Comments

Is this why you now have in my opinion an abnormally strong aversion to electricity or did the condition stem from an even earlier event?

BTW. Fados tonight. You can come to my house. We'll leave around 6:30, I think. But to be sure, I'll call you after I get out of the hospital.

Posted by: argyle at November 29, 2004 10:18 AM

Why do I fear electricity? This is part of the reason. Electric shock at the hands of an electric razor is another. Twice.

I'm tutoring tonight (6-7) then thinking of hitting a (math) rock show. So no Fados this time around. Next time maybe, but only if you can handle waiting for me, if I pass the background check.

Posted by: brian at November 29, 2004 10:39 AM

wait. hospital?

Posted by: brian at November 29, 2004 10:39 AM