television

I was raised by former hippies who, in grad school (so I guess calling them “hippies” might be pushing it a little based on your personal definition), converted to hardcore doctrinate Catholicism. As a result, I grew up in a house with no tv. Once I was safely off at college, a television as well as things like sweetened cereals (!!!) snuck into the household, but that’s a different story. So I spent my childhood playing outside, reading, generally amusing myself and/or being bossy and trying to get other kids to play hide-from-the-Nazis or whatever other weird game I’d come up with, but not watching tv.

I learned at an early age that television is the shared common language, so I knew enough to pay attention to 90210 via my classmates’ descriptions, but I just didn’t get it enough to want to watch. I wanted to understand how tv shows worked but I didn’t so much need to see them myself, though I did have one blissful weekend babysitting a neighbor family while a Degrassi marathon was going on. It was like reading Baby-Sitters Club books to take the plot apart, to see how in chapter 13 (or whatever) someone always threatened to leave the club but by chapter 26 it was all resolved. I could decode, but I couldn’t understand. That set me up to be a decent pop culture blogger for a while because it’s impossible for me to watch without thinking about the political implications of race/class/gender/narrative and I’d be bored out of my skull otherwise. Until it was bought out and revamped, Television without Pity was perfect for me because it was so much faster to read a recap of a show than to have to sit through it.

But this isn’t all a passive-aggressive way of saying that I’m smarter and better than everyone else who never missed an episode of Saved by the Bell; I’m weird in this regard and I acknowledge that. I’m a profoundly non-visual person, to the point where I couldn’t recognize which was Tom Hanks and which was Tom Cruise until a few years ago because I disliked and ignored both and distinctions didn’t matter. This is totally me. I don’t know if this is a result of not having television when I was young or whether it’s just how I am; I’d guess the latter. I think my tendency to take everything apart for analysis is also probably simply being me. My parents are still pretty snobbish about tv and how inferior viewers are, but I don’t think I have more than a residual amount of that attitude.

My brothers, though, had a very different response to not having television when everyone else did, and it’s something my grandmother remarked on pretty bitterly when we visited her last weekend. Tv turned them into zombies. They’d stare at the screen and be absolutely unable to pull themselves away, particularly the older brother with ADHD. I remember having to physically turn him and make him look at my face so I could tell him he had to go home for lunch, because there was no other way to get the message through to him. As adults or almost-adults, they seem to have more normal responses, but I remember being totally freaked out by the extent of their obsessions. The youngest and the oldest are very much video game geeks now, and their passion there seems related. They’re also the two who had fairly strong Tourette/attention issues as kids.

And the real reason I’m writing this post is Lee. She lived alone for a long time and tv has always been her companion. We have a small tv in our bedroom, though it almost never gets any use. The tv downstairs, though, is on pretty much all the time that she’s home. She’s started making a point of turning it off for a while so that we can talk without mediation, but that’s a rare enough occurrence to be noteworthy. Next week is her birthday and I’m going to buy her a flat-screen tv. It’s nothing huge or extravagant, but it will be nicer than the one she has and allow us to shuffle things around a bit. This isn’t a big number birthday, but I’m trying to do something special for her last birthday where it’s just the two of us, and this was the one thing I could get her that she’d use every day and that would always bring her joy.

So now I’m a daily tv watcher, though I’ve always got a book on my lap or some yarn between my fingers or my laptop running my Google Reader too. Maybe it’s because I’m from the internet generation and I can’t do one thing at a time, although I’m happy doing any of those things singly for hours without the tv. I just acknowledge that Lee and I have different needs and interests and I’ve been able to get her to watch Top Chef and I’ve also learned that the college basketball season lasts about 700 times longer than I would have guessed prior to living with her.

Once we’re parenting, though, this is going to change. A normal evening is not going to be spent in front of the tv, and Lee’s excited about that. I have a feeling she’ll relapse (particularly during March Madness) and I’ll end up doing a non-tv thing so she can watch on her own upstairs, but anyone who knows her thinks this is the surest sign that she’s ready to be a parent. We haven’t decided specifically what our tv-minimizing rules will be, whether we’ll have a weekly family movie night or what, and we won’t be able to decide until we really know who we’re parenting. I do know I’m looking forward to figuring out some middle way between my childhood and hers, and we’ll even have a nice new tv to use for it.