Some can watch TV in the daylight hours. I cannot. Well, I can, but choose not to if I can help it. In my late teens, early twenties, still living in my childhood home in South Sacramento, I discovered the sophisticated, urbane, and rapid fire humor of the films of Woody Allen, Annie Hall and Manhattan era, dialogue sparkling with literary and film cultural allusions, and existential wit. I reacted like Keats discovering Chapman's translation of The Iliad. I played at being a budding intellectual myself, so right up my alley rolled Allen's humor. But those hours in my brother's bedroom (he had the VCR and small black and white portable TV) I remember as escape from dull, droning summer days endured in a South Sacramento suburb, too old to play and too little money to mount adventures. Further, South Sac had zero parallels with Allen's portayal of New York City (the strictly whiter parts of the 1970s--Greenwich Village, Upper East Side, Central Park, Midtown; one would think no people of color live there, as Spike Lee wryly pointed out).
Older and whirling in early social circles, I proudly shunned TV, especially shows airing during the day. I needed to be out in the open air, not confined like an encouched invalid. Well, that's not true entirely, must rectify. After morning and early afternoon classes were over at Cosumnes River Community College, I would take the bus home (before I had enough money for a car), and eat a quick bowl of instant ramen. Setting up a TV tray table in front of my Dad's chair, I'd turn on channel 10 a little before 3:00 pm to watch everday reruns of M*A*S*H (the soap opera The Guiding Light broadcast the hour prior, so I caught snatches of that; one Friday afternoon I got so frantically sucked into a cliffhanger that I think I cut a class the following Monday, racing home to watch the shocking drama unfold, but that's another story). One afternoon I returned home and found my father in the back room reading. He'd evidently called in sick to work, teaching Social Studies in a high school in the west side of town, a suburb even duller than South Sac. We briefly talked, then I entered the living room, flipped the TV on, and got my ramen cooking. My younger brother came home a bit later. We exchanged "Hey," with negilible emotion. While I ate, my brother wandered into the kitchen to forage a meal too. The kitchen is between the living room where I sat, and the back room, which has only a sliding door opening into it. I hear my brother opening cupboards. Suddenly he yells out in mock outrage, "Where's the fuckin' mustard!" The horror in my skull exploded like the gates of hell loosing a fury of demons. I turned with a fierce whisper "Dad's home!" at the exact moment my father responded in shocked, unbeliving surprise. "What was that?!" Swearing wasn't done in the house, ever. My brother offered a faint, "Oh, uh, where's the mustard...." but it was over him. Dad balled him out. Jonn sheepishly apologied, then took his snack to his room--where he had the black and white anyway.
I look at my iPhone during the day, no problem. I'm writing this on a laptop on a sunny afternoon, the light given a sparkling rinse after a night rain. I also don't mind seeing a matinee at movie theater. What's different about TV? Going to see a film during the day feels like attending an event, like taking in a ballgame. I'm in the act of creative writing on my laptop (though not always, of course). But watching TV seems like hours stolen from life, precious time thrown away. I remember when young and all the neighborhood kids would huddle in somebody's bedroom to watch the Super Bowl. After ten minutes we'd feel boredom's anxiety, and run outside to play a pickup game instead. Why waste our childhood watching?
Perhaps my discomfort in this stems from Sunday afternoons in childhood. The weekend ebbs, the light seeps quietly westward, shadows fall away then disappear, and twilight summons the dread of returning to school on Monday. Disappointment settled in me when my parents turned on the lights in our brown stucco corner house. Freedom's over. Early evening Sundays aired "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom." I'm sure I liked the show, but that didn't muffle the dread like mud on my soul.
All my childhood my parents watched the nighly news daily, local news at 5:30, national news at 6:00, and then sitcoms and dramas until 10:00. I remember nightly maps on screen of regions of Vietnam. When I started college at 18, I began resenting the TV on seemingly all the time, as I heard it all through blaring even through the back room's closed door, preventing me from concentrating on homework. When an undergraduate at Sacramento State University, I would either stay at school till late, or come home, eat, then return to the library. My college years saw that contempt blossoming and growing. Give me open days out in the world! A vibrant life untethered from soul-sucking and dream-withering television!
In my San Francisco graduate school years, I went to a friend's apartment one Saturday morning to wander the city, letting random events unfold and activities develop (or maybe we were heading to pub for beers). A bright golden morning in the City by the Bay. On the way out the door, we passed a small room with a couch and a TV going, and my friend's roommate plopped down and watching. I said to her, "It's a beautiful day outside! Why are you in here watching TV?" She gave me a dirty look, and we left her to rot. Devoting attention to TV was, to me, wasting time watching other peoples' lives and not living your own. To live was to roam the day with the soaring sky your only roof and winds off the ocean!
Even today I flinch when walking our dog late afternoon through the neighborhood and seeing TVs flickering in living rooms. When I hear TV spilling out of screen doors in mornings or early afternoons, my flinch is seasoned with horror. But I can't feign righteousness. I'll sail headlong into YouTube rabbit holes of grizzly bears snuggling with bunnies, Karens justly slapped, or whatever.
Vigilance! Run outside and pull out the weedy oxalis from the yard! For you know it's there!
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