Why I Hate TV

I hate TV.

Not the machine itself, but the idiotic stuff it airs.

I separated from my ex-husband in mid-September 1991. I got the the 3 kids, the business, and some furniture. He got the house and the TV. I hated TV back then and figured it was worth it to give him the house to get rid of the TV. (I did want the kids.) I hate TV so much, in fact, it took my [then] 10, 11, and 13 year-olds eight weeks after the separation to convince me to buy them another one. They couldn't convince me to buy a remote control though; it's an evil thing and promotes couch-potatoism.

This morning, I heard two DJs talking on the radio about how they like most of the the reality TV shows on TV. They did discuss two reality shows they hate. Tell me, how are "reality" TV shows realistic?

What's life-like about dropping a bunch of people off on an island and putting them through a tests like eating bugs, swimming in water with octopuses (or is it octupi?), and stuff like that?

What's realistic about tossing a bachelor (or bachelorette) together with a dozen members of the opposite sex with the expectation that after all kinds of silliness, he (or she) will fall and love and live happily ever after with one of the dirty dozen? If happily-ever-after were that easy, wouldn't our mothers have just tossed us in a room with twelve of their favorites years ago?

And what about wife-swapping? Like it happens in real life the way they portray it on reality TV shows...

When I was a kid, my parents watched Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and the Waltons. Even then, I thought those shows were stupid. Like a bunch of guys really lived their entire lives, week after week, in a submarine underwater. No women, no kids, no dogs, no cats. Right. And the Waltons. My parents were never that nice. Don't get me wrong, my parents were great. But my dad yelled once in a while. My mom got cranky--a lot. (She had 4 kids. It makes sense now.) And my brothers were NOTHING like John-Boy...

I preferred spending time alone in my room, playing paper dolls, reading, lip-syncing to the songs on the record player, or--better yet, writing stories.

Still do.

Only difference, these days, is that my kid sister doesn't piece together the ripped pages of my rough drafts after she digs them out of the trash. She can't--she lives 2,700 miles away!