kill your television, or that annoying couple on the eharmony commercial

I’ve been watching an enormous amount of TV lately. What at first was a treat has since been a reminder of why I don’t own a television, (despite my angst of baseball-season-separation and lack of opportunity to conquer the Daily Double). For me, turning on the TV exposes my most sacred peace to the chronic illnesses of consumerism, anxiety, fear, and reality TV shows (that I somehow can watch numerous episodes of). But please don’t reduce my aversion to TV to an assumed, snobbish, distaste for that which lies outside of the intellectual, because through the internet and grocery check-out magazines, I too indulge the absurdities of pop culture. All-in-all, I guess I understand my distaste for TV to be founded on the same reasons I don’t like Las Vegas: too much stimuli and not enough space or time to sort it out. My basal ganglia can only handle so much.

During the past couple of days, on the couch coping with illness, it has just been me and the TV, while my books and pens lie neglected on the floor, lonely, and unused- - all of us wondering when - - if ever - - energy and focus will allow utility again. These days of re-exposure to TV have evoked a new reason for my dislike (and now distrust) of TV – there are families, and couples, and committed people all over TV. Everywhere, a culture where people couple-off and reproduce, and society encourages and rewards them for it. For this togetherness is not a communal one. I am not witnessing community where it ‘takes a village’ – rather, I am told (and learning) that it takes a husband, and a Mom, and there are usually heavily deciduous dogs running on freshly cleaned, white tiled floors.

Oh God, every time I see that commercial about the cell phone Family Plan Free Minutes and the spilled milk, I first wonder why I can’t seem to understand what the milk connection is and then I just want to cry my eyes out because I feel so lost. Oh, and on “Trading Spouses” today- I had endure witnessing two families as they experienced the longing for the temporarily traded spouse, but I kept on watching, almost dreaming that someone was missing me. Is this what it is sometimes like for kids of divorced parents? Is this how my gay friends feel in this heteronormative society? Or is just me, and somehow, I have step-by-step and year-by-year violated the governance of American society? I have noticed that the weather reports cause a similar sensation for me. Like the storms in the northeast yesterday - - I kept watching and it made me think about growing up in New York, and having a family, and listening to the scary rain on the roof at night after I moved to my room in the refurbished attic of our little house.

But I also discovered a new good thing about TV today. The Country Music channel. While tuned in there, I feel understood. There, exist others who feel alienated, too. They’re always on the outside looking in, too. Although, that Jesus Take the Wheel song freaks me out a little bit. I am not so sure I want Jesus driving my car.