thistledown


powered by SignMyGuestbook.com

Get your ow
n diary at DiaryLand.com! contact me older entries newest entry

2002-10-21 - 10:53 p.m.

I am a part of the first TV generation, and I don't know if that is meaningful or not, but I was reflecting on it today. It means for one thing, that I actually remember getting a television set ( and by the way nobody refers to it as the "set" anymore) for the first time, when I was about five. Our first TV was a big square box that sat on wrought iron legs, with rabbit ears and control knobs (the "horizontal hold") that had to fiddled around with to get a picture. If you couldn't make it work by fiddling with the knobs on the front, you could fiddle with the even more mysterious knobs on the back. It was a delicate, technical sort of thing that Dad had to do. Our TV had a dial with several numbers on it, but living in a small town in the midwest, we could only get one channel for sure and possibly two others on a clear night, when the wind was just right. The whole thing was over at 10:00 pm and you got a wavy "test pattern" and a lot of loud static if you left it on after that. Not that I was ever up that late. I was watching cartoons, and Captain Kangaroo, and the string of sitcoms and amateurish half hour dramas that came on Saturday mornings. I have often wondered if kids who have been watching sophisticated TV all their lives take it as seriously as I did. I watched and believed everything I saw, and in fact believed that TV land was more real than real life. This was obviously the way things were supposed to be, and I compared everything I learned from TV to what I saw around me.

I always tried to go to bed like TV children: on my back, propped up on a whole pile of pillows, with my arms outside the covers. I would try to lie there, all carefully composed, and fall asleep. Obviously, you were not supposed to get the covers messed up, and it was mandatory to don your robe and slippers before leaving the bedroom. But I would always wake up in the morning all tangled and rumpled, and I don't think I actually owned a robe and slippers until I was grown.

And then the TV children always had windows in their bedrooms that slid open quietly and there were no screens! It always made for easy sneaking out. Timmy on the Lassie show sneaked out through the open window so much, I wondered why his parents never seemed to catch on. They would rush into his room and find his bed empty, and the curtains blowing.....gasp.... he's gone. And then the next week he would do it again. My windows always had storms or screens or were painted shut, even if I were on the ground floor. This was a major deterrent to sneaking out, and being sneaky, of course, is an important part of any TV kid's life.

I always noticed that the surface of the ground was hard in TV land. You could hear the foot steps as Timmy raced to the house.... of course it was just a set, but I didn't know that. It was all so nice and clean. The real world, with all the grass and rocks and leaves and mud seemed like quite a problem by comparison. Other places, I decided, must have hard surfaces.

Fathers dressed up in suits and went off to work carrying brief cases in TV land. I could not conceive of where they might go all day, dressed like that. My father worked in a grocery store, one grandpa was a mailman, and the other was a farmer. Nobody in my world went anywhere dressed in a suit, but I knew it must be important, and suspected it was something my father should have been doing.

I used to look at the baseboards in different people's homes, to see if they had a mouse hole. I thought there was supposed to be a little arch shaped doorway for mice, like Tom and Jerry had. Oh, I knew there was no such thing as talking cartoon mice... I wasn't totally dumb..... and knew they didn't have little beds made from match boxes back in the walls. But... I knew mice existed, and I just thought they were supposed to have a little door.

Most of the stuff in cartoons was of course totally preposterous, and I didn't exactly believe what I saw, but some things I took seriously. I thought banana peels were slippery, and that people went around tossing them over their shoulders. Dropping one on the floor was quite a clever prank. And I expected to see stars or little birdies circling when I got a bump on the head. I was once very pleased to notice that I did sort of see stars, but the birdies never materialized.

The biggest disapointment though, was the animals. TV animals, as every kid knew, were intelligent, loyal, clairvoyant, and courageous. They knew things their owners didn't know, they went for help, they saved the day. Those were my very favorite shows: Lassie, Rin Tin Tin, My Friend Flicka, National Velvet, Fury. And the stuff my dreams were made of. I could never figure out why we always had such incredibly deficient pets. I was so ready to have a wonder horse, and I was certain that all I had to do was love it enough and it would be my faithful companion. Well, not quite. No horse we ever had could even be trusted not to bite and kick us, much less defend us against the bad guys. Even though I knew the wonder pet stories were not real, I thought the animals in them represented real animals.

And then there were several behavioral affectations I picked up. If something is bothering you, don't eat. All the kids on TV did that when they were upset and it always got attention. ("Beaver, you haven't touched your dinner!") And storming off. Flouncing dramatically up to your room for a good pout. The problem was that on TV, someone always went up and had a talk with the stormer, and in my family it didn't make such a big splash. My parents were more likely to just let me pout until I got lonely and came back down.

I cherished the idea that kids actually solved mysteries, caught the bad guys, saved lives. I was certain that I, too, would stumble upon a secret trail of clues, and in fact spent many Saturday mornings searching, and spinning stories about everything I found. The empty beer bottle in the vacant lot near our house wasn't there last week. Someone has been here! And there are footprints! On TV, the adults were always just complete idiots, rarely venturing out of the house or out of their routines, while the kids went out and had all these dangerous adventures. Where was Spin and Marty's mother? TV parents usually just sat around being oblivious, and then sometimes they got worried for heightened suspense. In real life, my parents pretty much put the nix on any dramatic adventures, along with most sneaking.

They also limited my TV watching. Considering my propensity for believing everything I saw, that is probably a blessing.

previous - next

< ? Random Acts of Journaling # >

alchera ? !

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!