Paint the TV black

I grew up without a television. Looking back on it now, it doesn’t seem like a strange thing, although I know that I am in a minority among others my age. My friend, Gil, tells me that he had cable in his bedroom when he was five.

I associate television with my grandparents. I did all of my early watching at their house on Route 97 in Narrowsburg and I have fond memories of Big Bird, Mr. Rogers and Duck Tales.

They had a large gray satellite dish, one of the early ones, in their backyard. To change channels you had to actually wait for the dish to move, and I remember punching in a channel and then running out to their back yard to watch it slowly make its way across the sky.

My grandmother would make me peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bring me honey-roasted peanuts in green plastic cups while I stretched across their carpeted floor, watching cartoons.

My grandfather loved the old show “The Honeymooners.” He owned every episode on VHS and I remember the smile on his face when I was old enough to enjoy them with him.

He would put in a tape, which consisted of two episodes, and we would watch it together. Undoubtedly, by the second episode he would be asleep, reclined way back in his red La-Z-Boy, feet up, mouth open and snoring.

The snoring would get so loud that I would have to turn up the TV. My grandmother would shout, “Ray,” and he would grumpily startle himself awake.

I haven’t seen the show in years but can still recite the opening announcer’s monologue and see Jackie Gleason’s caricature fade up out of a full moon.

I was always more of a fan of movies, and I hated commercials. I didn’t like the idea that I was paying for the content of the show, with my time and energy focused on commercials.

Even so, recently there have been a handful of TV shows that have caught my eye. I would often watch “The West Wing” with my Dad and have recently been getting addicted to “24.” But I much prefer to catch up on the seasons long after they have been broadcast, watching episode after episode commercial-free on DVD.

I came home to my house from a long day at work, unlocked the door and entered the living room. A shiny new box sat on top of our television. The box is a sign of my recent defeat in keeping my house in Brooklyn cable-TV-free. Although my roommates and I opted not to get cable last August when we moved in—there it was, connecting us to 300 channels of commercial goodness.

They were no longer satisfied with the Internet, Netflix, and the massive number of video game consoles whose controllers jut about the living room like octopus’ tentacles.

I approached it cautiously, catching my reflection in the darkened surface. Thinking back to Orwell’s 1984, I stared at the face framed perfectly in the box and wondered if there was anyone looking back at me.

Television, when used in moderation, can help establish relationships between two or more people. It can bring them together: a favorite show, a movie, or a Yankee game. What scares me is that it can also establish relationships with the commercialism that our society seems to embrace.

Big Brother in 1984 is always there, always watching.

When I was two years old, I’ve been told, I was riding home with my parents down Route 97. A Pepsi truck came into view. I had never watched television at this point in my young life, and had never even drunk a Pepsi. I raised a tiny finger, pointed it at the blue and red interlocking circular logo on the back of the truck and said clearly, “Soda.”

You can imagine my parents’ surprise. I had been infected with the advertising bug, although they had done their best to protect me.