If you sit too close, you'll go blind
Just FYI for anyone following along but not on my f'list: some of these entries will be locked.
When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. This was due to my love of the TV show, Daktari. Later, I wanted to be an oceanographer and then an ichthyologist because of my love for the TV show, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. At some point I also wanted to be an FBI agent (The FBI), a forest ranger (Lassie), and a spy for the CIA (The Avengers, Mission:Impossible). Do you see a pattern here?
I was one of those kids whose parent used the TV as a babysitter. And I spent a lot of time with the babysitter. TV has always been my source of comfort and escapism but back then, it was a close friend. As a result, my head is full of completely useless TV trivia. This impresses the hell out of my dad, who has on occasion, called me from Colorado or Hawaii to ask me something like "what was the name of the woman who co-starred in Hawaiian Eye"? And no, I didn't have to Google to know it was Connie Stevens. Btw, I never watched Hawaiian Eye; I just know who was in it (Robert Conrad and Anthony Eisley).
One of the things I'm grateful for is growing up when I did. TV was pretty awesome when I was a kid, mostly because a lot of what was on was from the 60's and late 50's (it was reruns, people - I'm not THAT old) and they had some excellent shows back then. Back then our TV set was black and white, which didn't really matter since most of what I watched was B&W. We got our first color TV in the mid 70's and let me tell you, that was a big, damn deal! I remember my mom and I watching some pretty lame stuff just to see what it looked like in color. Sort of like watching something in HD just to see how it pops. In the mid 70's we got cable and my life was complete. We no longer had to get up to change the change- we had this box with a honkin' long cable and push buttons. We had The Avengers on at 2am and I had a ginormous new crush. Life was good.
I don't really watch that much TV any more. Sure there are shows I watch regularly but I end up DVRing most everything and catching up on the weekends. However, that doesn't mean I don't always have a TV - or two - on at all times. There are three in the house and my rule is that I can only have two on at a time. The TV for me is mostly background noise. That friend whose voice drowns out the silence (or the WWE smackdown that the cats are doing in my bedroom upstairs). That friend who lulls me to sleep at night.
So yeah, I'm a product of too much TV as a child. But before you get the idea that TV rotted my brain, I like to think I owe my imagination to it as well as my ability to write. It's definitely made me a very visual person. TV has influenced who I am and how I think and if I still carry around some useless trivia, well, let's just call it memories of a childhood friend.
Oh, and my eyes are just fine, thank you very much.
When I was in elementary school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. This was due to my love of the TV show, Daktari. Later, I wanted to be an oceanographer and then an ichthyologist because of my love for the TV show, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. At some point I also wanted to be an FBI agent (The FBI), a forest ranger (Lassie), and a spy for the CIA (The Avengers, Mission:Impossible). Do you see a pattern here?
I was one of those kids whose parent used the TV as a babysitter. And I spent a lot of time with the babysitter. TV has always been my source of comfort and escapism but back then, it was a close friend. As a result, my head is full of completely useless TV trivia. This impresses the hell out of my dad, who has on occasion, called me from Colorado or Hawaii to ask me something like "what was the name of the woman who co-starred in Hawaiian Eye"? And no, I didn't have to Google to know it was Connie Stevens. Btw, I never watched Hawaiian Eye; I just know who was in it (Robert Conrad and Anthony Eisley).
One of the things I'm grateful for is growing up when I did. TV was pretty awesome when I was a kid, mostly because a lot of what was on was from the 60's and late 50's (it was reruns, people - I'm not THAT old) and they had some excellent shows back then. Back then our TV set was black and white, which didn't really matter since most of what I watched was B&W. We got our first color TV in the mid 70's and let me tell you, that was a big, damn deal! I remember my mom and I watching some pretty lame stuff just to see what it looked like in color. Sort of like watching something in HD just to see how it pops. In the mid 70's we got cable and my life was complete. We no longer had to get up to change the change- we had this box with a honkin' long cable and push buttons. We had The Avengers on at 2am and I had a ginormous new crush. Life was good.
I don't really watch that much TV any more. Sure there are shows I watch regularly but I end up DVRing most everything and catching up on the weekends. However, that doesn't mean I don't always have a TV - or two - on at all times. There are three in the house and my rule is that I can only have two on at a time. The TV for me is mostly background noise. That friend whose voice drowns out the silence (or the WWE smackdown that the cats are doing in my bedroom upstairs). That friend who lulls me to sleep at night.
So yeah, I'm a product of too much TV as a child. But before you get the idea that TV rotted my brain, I like to think I owe my imagination to it as well as my ability to write. It's definitely made me a very visual person. TV has influenced who I am and how I think and if I still carry around some useless trivia, well, let's just call it memories of a childhood friend.
Oh, and my eyes are just fine, thank you very much.