Stag Silence

I walked around the apartment aimlessly. Do you know the feeling when you walked into a room not remembering why you headed over there in the first place? I do that every once in a while. But I did it a LOT today. I walked into the kitchen and stopped to think why I was there. Not hungry... not thirsty... dishes done (Thanks John)... Hmmm.

I left the kitchen and sat at the dining table and looked over at the TV. It was off. I looked around, distracted, at the table top with and papers strew about. Did I sit here to clean up? No.

I see the basket of freshly washed laundry. Well, since I'm sitting here having forgotten why I came here... I fold the clothes slowly, paying attention to the developing holes in Lucas' sweatpants. Boy, he has really gotten longer in the last year. Think of Lucas, my mind wanders to the silence ... eerie silence of the downstairs of the apartment. It's been so silent all morning. But I was not alone! John and Lucas were in the same room! No Lucas-animal noises, no commercial music, no voices competing with gaming sounds. What's going on?

To see what they were doing (that was SO VERY quiet), I passed the dark screen of the TV to sit on the couch. I reach for the TV remote, ready to get a dose of QVC... Then it hits me....

I just remembered we disconnected our Cable box yesterday. It's been more than 24 hours without cable TV. Lucas has not noticed yet, but I feel like I'm going insane walking around my apartment like a lost puppy. I thought maybe I needed another (a third) cup of coffee, or something!

I think it's cable TV withdrawal. I thought Lucas was the addict, but maybe it's me. I keep the TV on as "background noise." Why anyone would need background noise is beyond me. I am always complaining of the noise in this place (see my very first post on Stag Nation), so to add something to the background was probably crazy.

I am not saying we will stop watching TV. We like TV. We like our shows: The Walking Dead, The Mentalist, Royal Pains... but we also know that when the TV is just on in the background, we tend to just mindlessly plop on the couch and find some suitable, non-irritating thing to pass the time until some other show comes along. Next thing you know, it's dinner time and I haven't thawed out the meat yet.

Thanks to Hulu, Netflix streaming, and the internet, we can purposefully find and watch shows we love. Lucas can look through the menu of available kids shows or movies. And we watch (most of the time commercial-free) for a finite amount of time. When the show ends, we turn off the TV (in theory).

A CBS News article points out that this idea of ditching the cable box is becoming popular: "Pay TV subscribers are declining, and according to a new survey by Forrester Research, people now use the Web more than their televisions." See the full article here.

This will be a good way for Lucas to learn to be a more active viewer of whatever he wants to view. This might be a good lesson in time-management for him... and for us.