During my salad days, the post collegiate ones, I lived in a shit-hole of an apartment. The flooring was cracked tile, I had raw sewage back up into my tub a few times before the landlord updated the pipes, all the neighborhood cats crapped in driveway, and there was a crack under the front door large enough to admit small mammals. At the time, it was awesome because it provided the opportunity to live outside my mother’s home roommate free.
The job that afforded my said shit-hole, was like many jobs when you are trying to establish yourself in a profession. Low paying. Life isn’t fair and most people can expect to pay minimal dues before reaching their goals.
To make things work, I lived frugally. I was fortunate not to have a car payment, and rarely ate out. I didn’t have internet, a cell phone, or cable. I’m not trying to poor mouth, or tell one of those awesome When I was a kid I had to walk five miles backwards in the snow barefoot just to get to school stories, because, frankly I’m not that funny. It’s more accurate to describe it as a When I moved into my apartment I was so cheap… stories, because I managed to save money living there.
Most of my furniture was used, recycled or in one case swiped off a loading dock. My mother graciously gave me an old TV. This worked okay for a year or two with a coat hanger for an antenna, but eventually it died. By this time, I was involved with the Better Half and I knew if he found out the TV was dead, he would go all guy on me and start checking online for reviews and taking me to electronic stores to find a replacement. Not that it wouldn’t have been a nice gesture, but the thing is, we weren’t spending a hell of a lot of time watching TV together. It would have been the IDEA of not having one rather than the necessity. I didn’t give a rat’s ass about the dead TV. With a kick ass stereo, a stack of paperbacks, and a drawing table, I didn’t need one.
So I left the dead TV on the shipping crate that served as my entertainment center for eighteen more months until the Better Half and I chose to co-habit. It wasn’t until boob tube didn’t make the move that he found out out it hadn’t worked in over a year.
It’s time to revisit my salad days. Life ebbs and flows. It is time again to bring a TV devotion to a halt. Lately it has been serving as something of a surrogate to real relationships with real people. Blame it on the weather. Blame it on eating alone. Blame it on peer pressure. It doesn’t matter. In the end, it’s evidence of a lack of restraint on my part. Besides if have to look for something to watch, I should probably be spending my time on other things.
But, what WERE you doing together if you weren’t watching tv???????
Yeah, tv can be a great time waster better spent on almost anything else.
you’re right. I can’t believe I’m still paying for cable instead of hooking a laptop up to the TV and streaming things that I actually want to see instead of flipping past hundreds of channels that have nothing of value on.
also, it’s hard to remain frugal when you live with someone who is not, and will denigrate your tendency to be so.
and we’re getting ready to turn it back on. we should probably use our usual cure and go stay in a cheap B&B for a night and watch TV. It only takes about 2 hours and then we’re done. Sick of commercials, nothing on to watch. The gears start turning and the cost analysis kills the whole notion. Then again, we are weak and sometimes resistance is futile. Heh.
meno, it’s a hard habit to break. I could justify it if I were doing other things
(ie. sketching sewing) while watching, but the series marathons are turning me into a vegetable.
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de, negotiating with a partner can be a losing battle, but if he uses the TV to unwind at the end of the day, it can have redeeming value.
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Maggie, you guys probably have more restraint than I’ve had the past few months. Cable, when watched properly, can be a window to the outside world, entertain kids long enough to cook dinner, and provide white noise to fall asleep to on the couch.