I’ve always had a weird relationship with television. It’s a love/hate thing and a guilty pleasure at once. I’ve had to defend how much I watch to someone who feels it’s excessive in one breath, and feel inadequate to someone who can’t believe I never watched big pop cultural classics in the next. Fifteen years ago we babysat a ten year old whose mother worked late nights, and we were a smidge judgemental when the girl insisted that she needed the television on for her to sleep soundly while she waited for her mom to get off work after midnight. (Regardless, she would sleep on my couch with the tv on, and her mom was glad she had a safe haven while she was on an extended night rotation.) It wasn’t until years later that I realized the kid was onto something. I started falling asleep with cable news on (back in the glory days of Headline News), and I learned that I was just aware enough to wake when the stories looped around, after a nap of perfect length and depth. On my worst pain nights, I still do it, on a different cable news channel, and the drone helps put me back to sleep each tine I wake, six or seven times before I give up on it pre-dawn and shut it off.
Television was limited when I was a kid in Germany. We had a small black and white set, with a screen barely bigger than a dinner plate, and we mostly just watched Armed Forces Network. When we got back to the states, I felt almost blinded by the “big” color tv in my grandparents’ den. It wasn’t until I was in middle school, when I got a tv for my bedroom at Christmas, that I developed a real relationship with it. For a while I was really jealous of my dad’s house, where he had a set in almost every room. I made myself get used to having just one for most of my adult life, especially when the Mr frowned upon having one in the bedroom. I regretted putting the primary one in the basement here, and had to remedy that by buying a second one last year. I’m feeling guilty over watching it so much, but also I feel like I’m getting my money’s worth from that satellite subscription.
I thought I’d always want bigger and brighter sets, with no attainable upper limit. If I had a room that would accommodate it, I’d keep moving up, to 55”, 60”, eventually 70 or 80 or who knows how big. For a year—or is it two?—my neighbor has talked about upgrading his tv. He wanted to wait until certain debts were paid, like car and furnace, and he wanted to be sure his job was in a solid position. This week he came to me and said he was ready to get a big one, and when was I free to go with him. (I was all excited, thinking we would use my Costco membership, and I’d get the 2% cash back bonus. Damned if he didn’t get his own account and just want me there to bounce ideas off of.) He settled on a 75” smart tv, and we needed Mr S-P to join us with his truck to get it home. It looked clear and bright in the store, but neither of us had any real sense of how enormous it really was until it dwarfed his living room. Watching the football game was all well and good while there was ambient light, but once we turned off lights and fired up Mario Kart, we got the full blast. It was painfully bright and crisp. He flippantly said, “no more falling asleep on the couch for me.” Sure, the giant screen made staying on the track easier for a non-gamer like me. But I think I have learned that there are limits to how big and bright of a screen I would ever want, and this may have just exceeded them. Playoffs are going to be excellent though.
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