Dear TV,

I love you.

I can watch you anytime, anywhere.  I can watch you when I’m cooking, folding laundry, eating, and even, when I’m reading. Sometimes, especially when my husband is away on a business trip, I keep you on all night. You keep the boogie man away, drowning out the creaks and groans of our old house, comforting me like my own fuzzy teddy bear with your warm, flickering light.

My love for all things “You” was really articulated by, who else, my husband – when he said that he would like to learn Spanish so he could have two extra channels (Telemundo and Univison) to watch. That is beside the five hundred we already have. I shook my head in disgust but deep inside, I got it.

And when he gave me the absolute reason why men tend to change channels obsessively: Men, he said, live in the unimaginable hope that maybe, just maybe, click!—and there will be a naked woman on the next channel.

And I understood, because with you, dear TV, I always have hope… and choice…if I don’t like what’s going on channel ten there might be something better on channel two hundred and seventy six.

Oh, how I despaired when after the birth of my child, I was bombarded with all those statistics of how you can make a child’s brain mush, if he or she watches too much of you! (I don’t mean to hurt your feelings but, believe me, dear TV, there have been harsher things said.) So for the last eight years, while working to instill in her a love of reading, green vegetables and not picking her nose in public, I’ve had to entice her away from you, even while I itched to indulge in you.

Moderation may not be the most alluring of concepts, but in life too much of anything —food, exercise, sex—is not good.

(Did I say sex? They will say I must be watching too much TV.)

But, do not fear unduly for the future viewers of this nation, cherished friend. Just today at the children’s section of the bookstore, in front of a rack of biographies, I pointed to a picture of Walt Disney and asked, “Who is that?”  And my daughter said, “The man who invented the Disney Channel?”

While it was not my proudest moment, it was not terrible either. That she thought of a TV channel before Disneyland, a place she billed as the “funnest place ever” was not really the worst thing in the world. You are more accessible than a fantasyland four hundred miles away.

TV, I want to reassure you that no matter what, my love for you will endure. They may attempt to cheapen you with questionable programming (I speak particularly to the show “Hole in the Wall” on Fox) but like our economy, the tide will turn eventually (for the better I hope).

There will always be the naysayers (didn’t Socrates worry about the impact of writing on man’s ability to think?) yet you and I will soldier on, keeping each other company long after the rest of the world has gone to bed.

XOXO

By Tania Malik

Labels: Tania Malik, TV

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# posted by Writing Mamas Salon @ 12:01 AM