Turn off your TV week

This week--From Monday, April 21st to Sunday, the 27th--is Turn Off Your TV Week, sponsored by the Center for Screen Time Awareness. They say all screens, including video games and computers, should be turned off to get the maximum effect of the...what is this?...a protest?...a ban?

Anyway, turning off the TV isn't a prob for me. Sue and I actually do have a television, but it's not connected to the cable. As a matter of fact, it's not even plugged in. Right now, it's on the floor in the corner of the bedroom with a DVD player stacked on top of it. We moved in January 15, and haven't watched any television, except when I "watched" the Super Bowl.

Anyone who has been in the same room with me watching television knows that I can't just sit and watch anything. I have to be doing something else at the same time. I honest to God don't understand how people can just sit still and watch television as much as most people do.

And when I tell people we don't have a television, I often get the same response I got from a co-worker. Total disbelief. They flat out don't believe me. Well who would, when you realize that, for example, this particular co-worker told me he had a television in every room in his house? Hey Mr. Green, he's so serene, he's gotta TV in every room....(Pleasant Valley Sunday).

It's not that I'm even opposed to television, no more than I'm opposed to say, polo. I don't play polo and I simply don't like watching television. I'd rather read or play a guitar or listen to music or talk to Sue or play with my dog or...well, you get the idea. There are just other things I'd rather do than watch television.

I do think there is a ton of crap on television, and I think a lot of it has gotten way out of hand and is inappropriate, for example, for young people, but I don't think percentage-wise there's any less crap than in say a bookstore once you factored in all the self-help books and autobiographies "written" by pop stars. You have to choose on television as much as you have to choose in a bookstore.