by Deb Powers

Recently, our family moved from one end of town to the other. The new apartment is airy, sunny and bright. Everyone has their own room rather than sharing cramped quarters. In addition to the new apartment, we've added a few other upgrades to our quality of life as well - a pair of new computers, a new car and a new television. The only problem is that our cable company couldn't schedule a turn on for cable in the new place for two weeks. That announcemnt was met with much wailing and gnashing of teeth from my children. Two weeks without television??? How would they survive? I was a bit more smug about the entire prospect - I knew, even if they didn't remember - exactly how they'd survive two weeks without cable.

Back when my children were little - ranging in age from 3 months to ten years - I made a conscious decision to turn off the cable television in our home. This was not, as I let them believe, a financial measure (kids, we just can't afford cable right now!). Rather, it was a deliberate experiment in forcing them to choose other means of entertainment than channel surfing.

To understand the total impact of turning off cable in our house, you need to understand that the town in which we live is located dead smack in the middle of the Central Massachusetts valley. It is, for all intents and purposes, a dead spot for traditional television signals. Without cable or satellite or some other means of enhanced transmission, your television is a pretty piece of furniture - if you happened to pick a television set that is, indeed, a pretty piece of furniture. Otherwise, it's just plain useless. Even the standard networks don't come in. Without cable, you have one television viewing choice - Channel 27, the local Spanish station. So when I called the cable company and canceled our cable television, I might as well have thrown out the TV.

The reaction of my two oldest children was understandably negative. The ten year old girl dramatically announced that if I didn't restore the cable *immediately*, she would be forced to move her entire bedroom suite next door to her best friend Rachel's house, where no one would try to stop her from watching 90210 - didn't I REALIZE that Dylan lay at death's door, and now she had no way of finding out if he had recovered?? My eight year old son was a bit more practical - he simply started disappearing around 4 PM every afternoon, the hour that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles aired. Within a month, he had a rotating schedule of friends' houses at which he could keep abreast of the antics of Splinter's quartet of artistically named turtles.

The effect on the three youngest children and me, though, was enormous. While I've never been a big television watcher, per se, the TV had often just been turned on in the morning before the kids left for school, and never turned off. While I did household chores and settled into writing, I was kept company by Judge Wapner, Oprah, Jerry Springer and an entire flotilla of infomercial hosts. If I needed half an hour undisturbed to work on a project, I thought nothing of flipping to PBS or Nickolodeon or Disney and parking the five and three year olds in front of the set while I got my work done. Without cable, I no longer had that option.

For the first several days, our house resounded with wails of 'It's so booooooring!' Then I taped a piece of paper up on the television screen with a brightly crayoned list of "Things to Do Instead of Watching TV". The list read, in part,

Read a Book!
Play a Game!
Dig a Hole to China!
Take a Walk Around the Block
Call Grammy and Complain That There's No TV
Invite a Friend Over to Play Scrabble
Write a Story
Clean Your Room
Go Outside and Get Some Fresh Air
Build a Castle
Make Your Own TV Show

Without television as a crutch, I found myself taking my own advice. Rather than turn on Sesame Street to quiet a cranky 3 year old, I plopped him in the stroller and took all the kids for a walk to the park. Instead of giving in to demands for a movie, I sat down each night to read a chapter of a book. I didn't dig a hole to China, but the kids and I did create a community garden from a vacant lot across the street - and everyone's spelling improved thanks to the frequent games of Scrabble.

It was two years before I called to have cable reinstalled. In those two years, my children read hundreds of books, learned to love board games and search-a-word puzzles, created plays that they put on for the family and complained mightily that they had no idea what half their class was talking about each day in school. When I finally relented, it was because a new roommate insisted on having cable television in the house, not because I missed any part of the daily news and 'entertainment' that television provides.

It's been nearly eight years since television became part of our daily lives again. The kids all fell rather easily back into their habits of watching too much TV indiscriminately - but I noticed that there's a difference now. They watch more critically. They're less likely to leave a show on just because it's on - they have better things to do if the television isn't satisfying. Despite their moaning and groaning about having no cable for two weeks, I haven't heard a single complaint about boredom. They haven't even bothered to hook up the DVD to watch movies. Instead, in the past two weeks, the ten year old dug out his old books on space and the constellations and shanghaied his brother into helping him put up a glow-in-the-dark star map on his new bedroom wall. My fifteen year old daughter refinished an old side table to match her new room. My thirteen year old son sat down and worked out the blueprints for our new garden in the spring.

Our two years without television has had more of an effect on my family than I ever imagined. Perhaps my oldest girl would have become a scriptwriter anyway - but it didn't hurt that she had to devise her own entertainment during those years. My 19 year old taught himself to play the guitar because there was nothing else to do - he and his band play out at many clubs that aren't even allowed to serve them a drink these days. And my younger children, as evidenced by the last two weeks, will never be at a loss for something to do when there's nothing on TV.

I'm tempted to call the cable company and cancel our appointment for reconnection. But then.. I'd miss the new season of Monk!