Me and TV

[susandennis]

I was born in 1949 to a family who got one of the first TV's. It was a huge wooden number with a teensy weensy screen. The was programming only at certain times of the day - the rest of the time all you got was a test pattern.

I watched John Nagy Learn To Draw and I had the 'home' kit. Never did learn to draw but I swear the gum eraser that came with the kit was a forerunner to silly putty which still fascinates me.

I watched Industry on Parade where they went into factories and show you how stuff got manufactured.

I watched Winky Dink where a little stick figure drew on the screen. You could get a home kit that included plastic to put on the TV and crayons so you could follow along with Winky. Like every other child, I quickly lost the plastic. Probably the difficulty of getting crayon off the screen led to the cancellation of that gem.

I watched Pinky Lee and saw him have a heart attack on the air - ya gotta love live TV.

Howdy Doody, Romper Room, and all the cowboy shows. Hey, Cisco!!!!

When my dad got promoted, his customers got together and gave us a color TV - we had the first one in the neighborhood. The only shows in color were Disney's Wonderful World of Color and Bonanza and the Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving. We were each allowed to invite a friend once a month to watch color TV. It gave me decent 'hood value.

In 1978, I had heard of VCR's but didn't pay attention. Until, one day on the way home from work, I stopped by a friend of my husband's house to drop something off. When I walked in she was watching 'All My Children' which aired at 1 p.m. and this was at 6. I totally got it in a flash and had one of my own by the weekend.

I paid $500 for that beta max. The remote control was not wireless.

I've never bought into the TV is Trash movement. I've always loved it as much as I do today. Thanks to technology, I can watch more of what I want when I want to watch it. I rarely watch 'live' TV. The evening news sometimes and baseball games are about it. The rest is TiVo'd or VCR'd.

At one point I had 2 VCR's hooked to the living room TV and 3 to the bedroom TV with a complicated systems of switch boxes to run them all. TiVo helped that situation a great deal. Now I have TiVo and 1 VCR on the living room TV and a VCR on the bedroom TV. This works pretty well if I plan.

And my planning for this new season is done... Here's where you collect the evidence that I am totally nuts.

Yellow is TiVo, green is one VCR and salmon is the other. As you can see we have a bit of a situation on Tuesdays and one on Fridays. Past history says that except for maybe 1 night or 2, enough shows will get cancelled so that all I need is TiVo.

I'm ready... Let the season begin!