S. Worthen | Weblog

I grew up without televisions. It wasn't an intentional policy decision on the part of our parents - they just never got around to buying one. On one hand, this meant I was culturally ignorant in copious ways, when so much of conversation between classes revolved around shows. On the other hand, this may not be unrelated to why I've always been in the habit of reading a fair amount.

It's also why I have no immunity to television. I can't ignore it - flickering images, ongoing sound. It distracts me from conversation, from attention span, chops up my mental waters with distraction. This is why, for years, I distrusted having one around the house. I need my attention span. And we didn't have a t.v. We didn't need to. Not mostly, and not at first.

My parents had one the year in Italy when I was only there for vacation. It was good for my sister's language practice. There was one downstairs in my (shared with 50 other people) house at Smith. We never needed one in Toronto for whatever reason. Returning to London, our fully-furnished rental flat came with a t.v. And so we got a DVD player to go with it. And then a Wii.

And now we have a house with no t.v. and a DVD and a Wii which are useless as a consequence. It was inevitable, really. So we ordered my/our first television yesterday. It should be coming here any day now.