I was just pondering the fact that my husband and I own a single TV. It's a rather nice television set, but I really do think that we're well below the average in having only one.

When I was growing up, my family always had several televisions spread throughout the house. There was the largest television in the living room and a second television in the dining room. I know many people frown on it, but my parents and I used to watch TV while we ate. The dining room table was also my main hang-out where I would color, write, or draw as a kid, so I could also keep my favorite cartoons or PBS shows on while I worked. The dining room TV was also viewable from the kitchen, so my mom would watch her soaps while preparing dinner or doing the dishes.

Following from that use, I think televisions can be quite useful in spicing up otherwise boring tasks. For instance, one of the oddest television locations in my parents' house was the laundry room. But it was an ingenious plan for making laundry time a little less boring and my mom could keep up with her soaps at the same time. My parents certainly didn't lay out a lot of money for this little luxury. They simply moved an older, replaced television to a new basement location instead of selling it for a small amount.

One place I can say that my parents never had a television was the bedroom. I'm not sure why this place was considered TV-free when no place else in our home was sacred. I feel like my family was actually odd in this regard. So many people seem to like having a television set in the bedroom for unwinding at the end of the day. And it was considered quite a "cool" thing to have your own television in your bedroom when I was a teenager.

If the many televisions spread throughout the house weren't enough, my parents had a small portable television as well. It was a tiny black and white model that they received as part of some sort of promotion. Besides taking it along with us once or twice while camping, it also proved useful in spicing up an otherwise unpleasant activity. When I complained that I didn't want to take a bath until a favorite television program was over, my parents hooked the tiny TV up in the bathroom. They plugged it in far enough away from the actual tub for safety's sake, but it was just enough to placate me.

While that's probably the strangest use of a portable TV you'll hear, I've known many people who used them for similar aims, although they typically use higher-tech versions than my little black and white model. One friend has a small TV with attached VCR that typically stays in the kitchen but can be picked up and transported at a moment's notice. Another friend uses a portable DVD player extensively, even going so far as to listen to movies on long car rides instead of listening to the radio.

With all of this TV talk, I think I'm going to have to look into purchasing a second TV for my home, maybe a portable one that can make chores go a little more quickly.

Remember the scene in the movie, "City Slickers," where Billy Crystal is trying to explain to Daniel Stern about how to program a VCR to record from the television? As they ride their horses through the wilderness driving cattle along on their vacation cattle drive, he goes into a very detailed and thorough explanation. But no matter how many times or ways he explains it, Daniel Stern will never quite get it; in fact, the explanation goes on so long that the other character exclaims that "he'll never get it; even the cows understand it now." It is a hilarious scene in the movie, but part of the hilarity comes from the fact that many of us don't understand it either, so we can relate. And it seems that just as some of us were beginning to figure out how to program our VCRs, along came DVD players that most of us feel we need a license to operate.

This being the computer age, DVD players, and even VCRs to some extent, are totally computerized. If one doesn't have or know how to operate a computer, the DVD player might be lost on them. It's as if our technology has passed up some of us. We want to be in on it, but somewhere along the way, someone changed the rules. It would be similar to someone adding another element to the English language - like a whole extra alphabet that we have to learn. As we read books and magazines, we would suddenly find this new alphabet interspersed with our old, familiar one, but since we haven't learned the new one, we can't read the material; we see some things we recognize, and we know we could probably "get it" if we took the time to learn, but that's the problem - we don't have the time.

When we bought our first DVD player, the only thing I knew about our current VCR was how to record something at a given moment. I had no idea how to set the clock or how to program the machine to record something at a later date. If I, or one of my family members, couldn't be home to hit record at the proper time, then the show didn't get taped. Along came the DVD player and I felt like I could suddenly learn how to use the VCR. The DVD player required a remote control in order to be used. It required switching channels or some such thing and then doing all sorts of input/output actions just to get to the part where I could start the movie. Thankfully, my teenaged son is a computer geek and seemed to inherently know how to work the DVD player. Soon my young daughters caught on as well. Whenever we want to watch a movie, they simply set it all up and all is well.

I like this system, but one day, I might want to watch a movie when they aren't home. Or worse, one day they will grow up and move away. I guess then, I might have to learn that new alphabet.

During a recent visit to my parent's house, I made an interesting observation: they have too many televisions. Now, being an avid television watcher myself, I would normally think that it's impossible to have too many televisions. I like to think of my TV as the background music to my life-- it's on pretty much all day in my house while I fold laundry and clean up after my kids. In fact, in my own home I wish everyday that I had a small television in my kitchen so I could watch "Oprah" while I'm chopping vegetables for dinner. So to me, you really can't have too many televisions-- there's always room for one more.

The exception to that statement is my parent's house. Now keep in mind they still live in the same four bedroom house that they bought in 1963. After raising a large family in that house, it is now just the two of them. Except for some reason, they have more "stuff" in that house than we ever did when I was growing up.

I noticed the other day that there is a television in nearly every room at my parent's house. The reason I really noticed it on that particular day is because "Fox News" was running a special report and I could hear it-- in stereo sound-- throughout the house because my parents had three televisions on, all set to the same channel.

Yes, my parents have televisions everywhere. In the kitchen. In the living room. In the family room. In their bedroom. In my dad's office. In the guestroom. MY dad even owns a tiny, portable black and white set that has been known to be watched while he's in the bathroom.

But the kicker came the other day, when my Dad came home with a brand new 13 incher that he got a great deal on at one of those big discount warehouse stores. It was a TV/VCR combo and my dad thought it would go great in my mom's sewing room.

But even my mom thought having another TV was unnecessary. After all, there are only two people that live in their house. They already owned six televisions, this new one would make seven. And why did he buy a VCR combo when all they watched were DVDs?

I told my Dad to take the set back and he got mad. It was a great deal, he reminded me and besides-- he wanted it. So he set it up in my mom's sewing room so she could watch "Fox News" while she sews and does crafts. And guess what? Despite her resistance, she does watch it.

So I guess it's fine to have TV's in every room-- I mean, we all want to stay connected to the world. But in this day of high tech, plasma technology, you'd think my parents would at least own one flat screen, high definition TV. I'm almost fearful of the day that my dad discovers the new technology-- I can see him methodically replacing each set, one by one, with a high tech, flat screen alternative.

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!