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Show What to do when you turn off tube? the editor's column By MARC HADDOCK "Turn off the TV!" Oh, do we have to? Can't we just watch one more show? Please, please, please. (This was me, not my kids. Oh, they were saying it, too. But they just sort of like television. I'm the addict in the family.) The voice was my wife's. And the edict was handed down as the solution to many of the problems our family faces. We don't talk enough anymore. We don't read nearly enough anymore. We don't spend any time together anymore, because we are spending time with the television. At least that's how the reasoning went. As far as I was concerned, things were as they had always been. Mr. TV has been a part of my family as long as I can remember. I was born in 1951, and my earliest memory is sitting in front of the glowing tube, getting educated by Howdy Doody and Cowboy Bob. I grew up with Mighty Mouse and Maverick. I've seen all of the television episodes of Superman and The Lone Ranger. I've traveled down Route 66 as a youngster, and flown the skies with The Whirlybirds and Sky King. I used to have lunch with Soupy Sales every afternoon. And anyone who has had lunch with Soupy Sales as much as I did must suffer from' some type of defect that makes him or her unable to function without the television blaring away in the corner. The cast that has made up my life, all is quiet. And I don't dare turn the television on because the night before the decree came down to turn the darn thing off. Then it happened. After all, the idea was for us to communicate, so we communicated. We had a fight. It was aways so much easier to just sit back and let the tube think for us, with soothing ideas that melted away the tensions of the day. Now we were working out those tensions naturally. It was just as noisy -- but not as satisfying. So I tried to read. (Another problem pulling the plug was supposed sup-posed to resolve was the lack of reading going on around the house.) But it was too early in the course of this experiment to read, because the second party involved felt like she was still not being . communicated com-municated with. Anyway, after she tried to communicate com-municate with me for several minutes while I was reading, we started to communicate for a second time. And we had another fight. And I could see that turning off the TV was not going to be all it was cut out to be. But things are getting belter. And for the most part the television is staying off. Monday night was a good example of what we're trying to achieve. I read some short stories to the two-year-old before carrying her off to bed, then settled down with the four-year-old and the five-year-old to read "The Little Engine that Could." Off to bed my four-year-old wenl, whispering "I think I can, I think can, I think I can," all the way tothe covers. My five-year-old carried the books to her bed, where she could examine them to her heart's content in ihe dark. (What she does with them in there I'll never know.) The rest of us settled down It enjoy a peaceful half hour without own books. My seven-year-old read about an eight-year-old named . Ramona Quimby, my nine-year-old was finding out what really happened hap-pened to Alice when she fell into Wonderland, and I was lost in a murder mystery set in a Fransiscai Abbey in 1327. Nancy tried to communicate (she never gives up), but I handed her a magazine and told her this was the time to read. We would communicate com-municate when the children wenl lo bed -- just in case we started to fighl again. Oh, we haven't turned the Ihingoll altogether - but we turn it on by mutual consent, and for a purpose ! have to admit, it's working very , well. Of course, there are exceptions!! I" every rule. And I'll just bet if I went home on any given weekday at 11 a.m. or so, the television would be on. I cai even tell you which soap opera would be playing. But I wouldn't get picky and tun the TV off. Because then we'd really start communicating - and you knot what they say about too niuchod good thing. all creations of that marvelous in-' in-' vention that sits in the corner and thinks for me, is innumerable. I am, in short, a charter member of the television generation. And for such a person to turn off the television just because there's nothing but garbage to watch .is unnatural. And to be frank, for a while it ; didn't look like the great experiment ', was going to be all that successful. The first night was tough. Here's the scene: The kids are all in bed, the house is warm, and here we are, husband and wife, faced with each other. In some other living room Remington Steele is working its' way towards another stirring resolution. But not in mine. In my living room |