A CHILD OF THE AGE OF TELEVISION....

I am a certified, dyed-in-the-wool, can't live without it, television junkie.  It all started when I was a child.  Yes, we only had three or four channels back then...no cable...no DVR's or even a VCR...but we had television!  I had a small color television in my room.  (Okay, you don't have to call me spoiled!)  I remember laying in bed on Saturday mornings and watching Bugs Bunny or whatever cartoons were on that one morning of the week.  I remember staying up late and watching The Tonight Show and loving every minute of Johnny Carson's comic genius. I remember staying up really late and watching reruns of Perry Mason.  I remember watching live coverage of sad occasions that I really didn't understand then, such as the funeral train carrying Robert F. Kennedy's body.

I remember watching TV with my father.  He was blind, so many times, I was his "seeing eye daughter" and would tell him what was happening on a show.  He liked Hee Haw and Lawrence Welk.  He was a bit of a TV junkie himself, "watching" everything from the news to sitcoms and game shows.  And he would talk back to the TV all of the time!  I guess that's where I got it from.

I remember trying to watch TV with my mother...but she would fall asleep in front of it many times.  I guess that's where I got that from!  After she retired, I got my mother hooked on soap operas.  I got hooked on a couple during college and she began watching with me.  She loved All My Children and Guiding Light.  I knew her Alzheimer's had really gotten the best of her when she no longer cared what was happening in Pine Valley or Springfield.


The TV - well, usually more than one - stays on in my house usually 24 hours a day.  I watch the news and weather...I love cooking shows...I enjoy reality shows (The Real Housewives are my guilty pleasure!)...I follow American Idol...I am inspired by DIY programs...I relish programs about the supernatural...shows about hoarders make me feel more normal.  In other words, I like a little bit of everything - sometimes anything - except cartoons, where it all began.


It runs in the family, my kids are junkies, too.  I used to tape many, many episodes of Blues Clues, Gullah Gullah Island, and Little Bear to entertain my son as a toddler.  In fact, he pretty much taught himself to read by watching old episodes of The Electric Company with closed captioning on.  He and my daughter watch TV all of the time - mostly anime and MTV now, though she loves to watch movies.


My husband is not immune either.  He usually doesn't discover that he likes a program until it's in syndication - then he Tivo's EVERY episode.  How many times can you watch the same episode of Friends?  He also watches a lot of The History Channel and The Weather Channel.  And he and I have gotten into the bad habit of leaving the TV on all night.  I guess I feel like I'm missing something if I turn it off....


So I guess it's not a big stretch that I have worked for a television station for the past almost twelve years.  One of the perks - cable TV in my office!