No Beer and No TV Make Something Something

Going through my usual list of websites and blogs this morning, I came across this interesting piece on the Christian Science Monitor blog section.  In a nutshell, it says that sometimes sharing with others some financial or frugal choices you’ve made might make others react unpleasantly.  For example, if you get rid of your TV and tell others that fact, it might put people on the defensive.

Having no television myself for well over four years, I started to think about my past dealing with this very thing.

When I was a kid, I remember when we talked about this girl in my brother’s grade whose family didn’t have a television by choice and I remember specifically thinking how weird that was.  The concept of no TV was entirely foreign to me.  How will she know what’s going on?  How can you relate to people who are talking about a television show we just watched?  Of course, the girl was talented and smart and later in high school, we became friends.  The issue of the TV never came up because it didn’t matter.

In an entirely different incident a couple of months ago, I was talking to the server at the local Subway and she started on about some commercial that she was certain I had seen.  Of course, I hadn’t and really had a hard time relating to anything else she said about it because I had no context.  My end of the chat was peppered with “uh-huh”, “okay, sure” and “hmm” as I tried to navigate this conversational mine field.  She wasn’t even talking about a show, but rather an ad.  With sandwich in hand, I left the place rather confused and had no idea what she just said.

When I talk with people, I try to engage them on subjects as best I can.  However,  I have been noticing more and more though that I have a difficult time talking to people about anything on television.  Not that I don’t enjoy watching some television, but I like to do so under my own terms.  I don’t like advertisements every eight minutes.  I largely despise reality and talent shows.  For every tidbit of good programming, there’s a sea of crap you need to wade through.  Most of what I like can be found legally online or through Netflix a few  months later.  A TV is just an encumbrance, one that sucks you in and before you know it, you’ve watched hours of programming on TV that you don’t even enjoy…it’s just there.

The reason we don’t have a TV is not to feel superior to others, but just that after taking a good look at our time and how we value it, we’d rather be doing other things.  I like to take time to read books, blogs, play games, listen to music, write, play hockey; just a number of other things than watch TV.  I understand that people are fine with spending their time watching TV.  That’s cool.  I’m just not into it like I used to be.