TV or not TV?

October 18, 2011 at 11:28 am Leave a comment

It might be kind of hard to believe, but I did not see a television until after my third birthday. This was because we lived in places where there was no broadcast signal, or, when there was one, it only broadcast during the day.

I was a military brat. And we lived in places where things like 24-hour electricity, or clean water coming out of the tap were iffy at best. Batteries, candles and jerry-cans were normal. And that run-down sound that you sometimes hear in modern music? I heard that more often in real life than I care to admit. Records and tapes would not just stop, they’d slow down into silence, either faster or slower depending on if it was a brownout or a blackout. We always laughed- but we were kids.

I was nearly 10 before I saw a color television. It was a thing of wonder. We were glued to it. My grandmother would shoo the lot of us outside, but that TV was like a magnet, sucking us back in like moths to a flame.

I sincerely believe that not seeing television as a small child helped to shape me into the person I am today. True, I’m missing some of that cultural ‘glue’ that some say makes me “American”, but I like to think that what I got in its place made me more a global citizen.