Ah, it feels good to have the chores done. Laundry washed and folded and put away; groceries for the week bought and put away; and the last of the taxes done and paid. It's raining outside, and I have several good books to read, and jelly beans to munch on... Hmm. Life is good. So, what shall I write about today? There was something I thought about earlier, but I can't remember what it was, so it probably wasn't all that exciting...
Matt's watching something in the other room on the TV involving a lot of screaming. I'd be willing to bet that if I got up and went in there, the girl doing the screaming would be about half-dressed. It's definitely one of those sorts of shows.
There's something to talk about: TV. Before Matt and I started dating, before I even knew that I wanted to date him, Matt didn't watch TV. He lived with KT and Ashby, and I more-or-less lived with Jeff, and aside from the weekly gathering to watch Star Trek: Voyager, Matt just wasn't interested in TV. Someone would put in a tape or turn it on, and he'd excuse himself from the room and go play on the computer for a while. I was never taken with TV, either. After we started dating, I thought it would be one of those things that we would agree on a lot.
When he moved in with me, I had cable. There was no reception without cable, and while I'm not a huge fan of TV, I do occasionally like to watch a special on A&E, or sitcom reruns when I'm feeling bored. After we'd been living together a while, he told me he wanted to get HBO, mostly because HBO was where The Storyteller was. (The Storyteller is a Jim Henson/Muppets production which brings fairy-tales to life very beautifully. Matt is a major Jim Henson fan.) Well, with two incomes, we could afford it, so I agreed. And that didn't bother me any.
But now... He watches cartoons every morning while I'm in the shower. In deference, I suppose, to the fact that I think the cartoon he watches is crap, when I'm in the room, he's watching ESPN's SportsCenter. In the evenings and on the weekends, if he isn't on the computer, he's watching television.
He's turned into a remote-control fiend, too. He'll only stay on a channel for about three seconds before changing it if he doesn't like it. Even when I'm watching, too, it never seems to occur to him to wonder whether I've seen enough of it to tell whether I'd like to see it. The few times I've seen enough to be intrigued by the show, I usually resist telling him to turn the channel back, because watching TV seems so much more important to him than it does to me. I don't care if I miss the show - after all, I only saw three seconds of it. But he gets really irritable if he can't find something on that he deems worthwhile. (And I'll be damned if I can figure out what his criteria are, either.)
Don't get me wrong. Aside from ESPN and the crappy morning cartoons, most of what he chooses to watch is either educational or fun, or both. I don't really mind that he engrosses himself in television, especially considering how much I engross myself in books. But...
A while back - a year and a half or so, I guess - a friend of ours came to town to visit many friends, and we offered to let him stay with us, and he accepted. While he was in town, he visited with everyone except us, and then the morning he was due to leave, spent the entire morning watching the NBA draft on ESPN, instead of talking with us. (He talked to us about the draft, but I don't count that. I was desperately bored, moderately offended, and very certain that this friend was not being invited back. I'll happily meet him elsewhere for dinner, or at another friend's house, but I really don't want to subject myself to another six hour stint of ESPN.) And I worry that this is what Matt is turning into. Oh, it's not a huge worry. I suspect that if I asked Matt to turn off the TV and spend some time with me, he'd do so quite happily. And - as I said - since I spend most of my time reading, it's not like I feel that he's ignoring me for the TV. Actually, I probably ignore him more than he ignores me. But there is this niggling doubt, especially in the mornings, when I hear the pathetic dialogue and heavy-handed morality of the cartoon blaring forth.
The other thing that bothers me is his perception of things. We still tell our friends that we don't watch a lot of TV. And in a way, that's true. Matt doesn't watch a single popular TV series. He just aimlessly flips through the channels. But does he really think that the actual hours are still few? Check out this entry in his Random Scribblings. He lists a lot of excuses for not finding the time to read anymore, but I do all the things he lists, and I still find plenty of reading time. What's he doing when I'm reading? There are only two things on the list: playing on the computer, and watching TV. To be fair, playing on the computer takes up probably 70% or more of that time, not the TV. But I was slightly disturbed to notice that he didn't mention either activity. Well, it wouldn't have fit with the post he was writing. Maybe he does realize, and left those things out just to improve the writing.
Ah, this sounds like a complaint, and I didn't mean it to. It doesn't bother me that he watches so much TV - he still watches less than two hours a day, which is a miniscule amount of TV for an American. And, though it bothers me that he enjoys so many programs that I think are terrible (certain cartoons and ESPN, specifically), tastes are different, and that's fine, too. This was just supposed to be a ramble on how the TV can take over your life, and how stealthily it can do so when you're not paying attention. Matt was just the obvious example. I'm sure I watch a lot more TV than I used to, too.
Ah, well. Enough of that.
No comments:
Post a Comment