2000:  My Personal Trainer
2001:  Friends Indeed
2002: The Baby Exploded
2003:  The New Navigator
2004:  If You Can Type...

It's good to be home again,
but I'm sure worn out from
playing with all those dogs!

FUNNY THE BLOG

"Hello from Milwaukee"

(did you listen to the audio entries
I made during our flight to Milwaukee?)

TIMES CHANGE?

6 October 2005

The whole "tagging" thing is pretty silly, but Mary posted this today:

1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your twenty-third post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five people to do the same.

As I said, I'm not going to "tag" (she didn't either), but out of curiosity I did do the archive part.  To really get the impact of sentence #5 of my 23rd post, it helps to include the fourth sentence as well:

I lounge in front of the TV. You know...like every other day, but without the guilt!

This referred to the things I get to do when Walt is out of town and from this I learn that I have not really changed much since 2000!

...Ahhh...television.  When did I become addicted?  I think I was addicted even before we owned a television set.

I was not the first--or even close to the first--kid in my neighborhood to get a television set.  The first person I remember getting a TV set was my friend Gayle Tarzia, with whom I walked to school each day (uphill both ways, barefoot, in the snow, in case my children are reading).  When Gayle's family got a TV, I began spending most of my time at her house.  My mother forgot what I looked like and Gayle's mother, Rose, wondered when she'd adopted a third child.  They were always feeding me dinner, if they could drag me away from the TV set.

When I wasn't watching my favorite programs at Gayle's house (the one I remember most was Superman, which may explain why I eventually grew up and gave birth to a child who thought he was Superman), I would hang on every word of the stories she told me about the programs I missed the night before, on our walks to school in the morning.

I still remember vividly getting our first television set, when I was 10 years old.  It was a Muntz TV, a big blonde box and it sat on the window seat in our living room, and once it was up and running, we sat down to watch "Live with Luigi," starring J. Carroll Nash and Hans Conreid, among others.  It told the story of an Italian immigrant adjusting to life in his new country.

Television became the evening entertainment.  We watched Bishop Sheen and Ed Sullivan and I Married Joan and Our Miss Brooks and a host of others.  I was a fan of Howdy Doody and wanted to be a member of the Peanut Gallery.  I loved watching Loretta Young sweep in through the door and give the introduction to the current week's story (usually some tear-jerker).

My father was a huge fan of boxing and he took over the TV set whenever there was some prize fighting going on.  He particularly liked the heavyweights--when those guys hit, you got a real bang for your buck.  (I suppose he was a prize fighting fan because he had an uncle who was a professional boxer.)

I watched Winky-Dink and You every day and walked down to the local TV station to buy a special Winky-Dink kit.

The gimmick here was that kids at home were asked to help Winky-Dink out of a jam by drawing whatever Winky needed (rope, ladder, bridge, etc.) on the TV screen.

You would place the clear piece of plastic that came in the kit over the television screen and connect the dots to create a bridge for Winky-Dink to cross to safety, then trace letters at the bottom of the screen to read the secret messages broadcast at the end of the show. Which I guess makes Winky-Dink the world's first interactive video game. 

I can remember running home with my kit, so excited to watch the program that day.

We watched the Mickey Mouse Club when it began and when the show began broadcasting in color, the joke was "I'll bet that's beautiful in color."   (I didn't have a color TV until after Walt and I were married.)  We loved Sid Ceasar's Your Show of Shows and, later on, when All in the Family began, we laughed at how much like Archie Bunker my father was.

The Academy Awards were first broadcast the year we got our first television set (1953--I was 10) and we were right there watching.

I raised a family of TV addicts (though Jeri and Tom seem to have managed to break themselves of the habit).  Jeri watched the very first Sesame Street broadcast and as a toddler was already a fan of MisterRogers and The Gentle Giant ("you wait here, and I'll call Rusty...").  Kimba got her name after the cartoon of the same name, to which Jeri was so addicted that she won an award in kindergarten or first grade for a picture she had drawn of the white lion.

Ned, of course, was Superman, and I can still hum the theme songs from all the super hero shows (and Speed Racer).

So, as I sit here with the new Logo network on at my elbow, watching a movie called "Dress Grey," where Alec Baldwin looks like a teenager, and I read that five years ago, I was talking about enjoying Walt's time out of town because it gave me an opportunity to watch TV without the guilt, I realize that not only have I not come very far since 2000, but not really since 1953 either!

PHOTO OF THE DAY

Tom, Jeri, and Jeri's godmother
(also named Jeri) and her husband.

 
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