T.V or not T.V

When I was a little girl the T.V. was always on in the house. My mother watched soaps like it was a religion. I remember coming home from school to a house where if there was a T.V in a room it was on, even if no one was in the room. As the years progressed T.V viewing changed it went from bad soaps to worse talk show T.V. Mom watched them all, the ones that she missed she would ask others if they had watched. With the advent of the VCR that changed. She recorded the shows that she thought she would miss, and then watch them late at night or on the weekends.

At the time I moved out I was so sick of the thing that I did not have one for a few years. Then when I did buy one it was a small 13inch. My son and I would rent movies and watch what we wanted when we wanted. My mother hear about this and started taping shows and sending them to us to watch. Out of an eight hour tape there might have been one show on there that interested one of us.

When mom got sick and moved in with us we got cable, because she whined about how quiet my place was. It was a total waste of money. I paid $60+ a month and if I got to watch something that I might find interesting it was because she was not in the house. If she were not home when I got there I would turn on the radio, she would then turn the T.V on over the radio when she got home.

I do remember we got into an argument about what I watched. With my work I do not want to see "reality" crap. I deal enough with it on the job, give me a movie where giant pigs eat people, or frogs attack, or swarms of grasshoppers eat cars. Dragons, knights, anything not real unless it is a documentary on a historical figure.

When she left, cable went with her. I was never so happy to get rid of something. I now just have Netflix and love it. I watch what I want when I want. My patients ask who I want to win on a particular show, I get some strange looks when I tell them I don't own a T.V. and have no idea what they are talking about. Many of them look at  me like I have three heads, they cannot imagine a life without the constant bombardment of noise. I do not miss commercials, who won/did/did not do with who. I love the peace that I have, the ability to work on my cross stitching, reading, or going out. So for me the answer is not T.V