I Can't Bear to Watch

I’m a fairly conservative guy.
No, really.
I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but I’m still on my first wife.
I’ve only got two children – that I know of.
And, up to now at least, I’ve only owned two televisions.
No, really, just two televisions!
The second – the Sony, has been with us for nearly fifteen years now.
Cable TV was just an interesting idea when we first brought her home. Televisions still came with those things they called ‘antenna’, and there were only a handful of stations that you could ‘get’.
But the old Sony is fading fast now, and I have to plan for that, well, that eventuality, as they say.
It’s not easy.
We’ve become accustomed to its face, its dials: the feel of its remote control in the hand.
Or maybe it’s more like a window, looking out onto a well-manicured lawn, shaded by trees.
It’s as if, one day we looked out that window and the grass had browned, overnight; or as if a large oak tree had toppled, exposing its roots, disrupting the scenery. At least that’s what we fear.
Right now, the changes are gentler, more subtle.
The colors have faded.
It takes longer, in the morning, for the screen to awaken.
Sometimes it does strange, unexpected things: makes little pops, fades in and out, hisses and hums.
We pretend not to notice.
If it catches us staring, we smile, awkwardly, and look away.
We wonder if we should just unplug it, put it out of its misery. But that would open up a Pandora’s Box of questions and critical decisions.
I guess you’d have to say, we’re in denial.
On a good day, at someone else’s house, as we watch the Red Sox or a DVD, we are full of hope.
A new television, it seems obvious, could add so much more to our lives, than the old Sony.
Color. More color.
Right now the scenes of bodies being pulled from the bombed-out buildings in Beirut are drab, lifeless: almost like sketches of reality.
A new, LCD flat panel display would make the killing life-like!
Right now reality television has all the appeal of an I Love Lucy re-run: a new 50 inch wall of television would bring that parade of egotistical, vain, posturing ‘real’ people right into our home.
Right now our expanding collection of DVDs of films that only lasted in theatres a week or less, are hardly worth watching on the old set.
With a new wall-mounted flat panel TV with a four-speaker surround sound audio system, the same level of disappointment felt by those who spent $9 for a ticket to see these films at the mall, could be experienced by us, in the privacy of our own living room!
That’s the nature of television today: it specializes in pain, anguish, disappointment and disillusionment. And those kinds of emotions can only be fully experienced - safely and without fear of any real involvement, by utilizing the latest technology
This could be a life re-arranging experience.
We might have to move furniture.
We’ll probably experience an extended period of mild neck pain, as we try to adjust to the new sight-lines between the couch and our new TV.
We may, finally, be forced to install curtains in the living room so that the neighborhood kids don’t turn our lawn into an open-air theatre.
We may never venture out into the real world again.
That is, as soon as you know who, goes you know where.
It’s an ethical crisis.
Last week I woke up early, came downstairs, and found the old Sony still on.
Her screen was hot to the touch.
Nobody admitted doing it, but there were guilty looks all around.
A few days later I found her original remote on the carpet: its batteries scattered about like broken bones.
We really should be treating her differently, fighting to extend her life – though the warranty has long since expired.
In other cultures – the Japanese for example, they would have long ago put her on a wooden raft and let her drift into the ocean. The Japanese are not sentimental about technology.
There are, of course, other options.
For a small fee the landfill would take her.
There’s an avant-garde artist in Kansas, who is hanging old tube TVs from tree branches along old Route 66. He hopes to ‘string-up’ over a million between Chicago and Skylark, New Mexico.
I’d like to be part of an art installation, when I go.
Part of the problem is that we don’t really know what the old Sony wants. She still seems to have some life in her, some will to televise left, but she is having trouble communicating.
I’ve checked the set-up menu, but I can’t seem to access her inner programming.
Some days it seems as if her colors have brightened, that she’s regained some of that old Trinitron personality.
We can and do make adjustments to the color – on a program by program basis: tinkering with the tone, the brightness and contrast, and that seems to work, for a time. But then a sporting event comes on and the grass is orange, the sky green, the players blurs of light as they move about the field.
When we’re at the big electronics store, looking at the rows of screens, the talking heads bobbing up and down like a giant chorus line, we find ourselves nodding along with them, becoming hypnotized by high-definition, dazzled by the bright colors, overwhelmed by each and every fabulous got-to-have-it feature.
But then we drive back home and, there she is: so sweet, so trusting. Even her cataract-misted screen – with its washed out colors, seems comforting.
I just can’t bring myself to turn the switch.
I’m just going to have to pay a little extra, and have the delivery guys haul her away.
It’s the least we can do, for an old friend.