There & Back Again...A Cable Tale

My little tv-head in the making

I have had an addiction to television from an extremely young age.  My mom always said that even in infancy if I could have crawled into the tv I would have.  My childhood love affair was certainly strengthened my freshman year of high school when I had such a severe case of  mono that all I could do was lie on the couch for three weeks.  Fast forward a few years to college, once I was out on my own the first thing to go was cable.  I couldn't afford it.  I couldn't afford food.  I was broke. 

Then I met my handsome future husband.  He had cable.  And heat. And food.  I was hooked (well, he was fabulous too, I guess).  We'd spend hours snuggled up in front of the boob tube.  We had Alfred Hitchcock marathons, we always watched all the Godfathers every Christmas, and all of the my beloved Lord of the Rings movies AT LEAST once a year.  It was bliss.  Mind numbing, time wasting bliss.

Once we got married, it was a no brainer that we would continue on that path.  Watching tv, watching cable, spending hours of our lives on the couch.  It took moving to Arkansas & a regional cable price increase of $50  for us to re-evaluate our cable choice.  We kept cable for the majority of the first year we lived here, but shortly before we had E, & I quit work we gave cable the heave ho.

Truth be told I missed it.  It was like giving up caffeine; I was addicted.   We tried to get the convertor box & antennas to work, but they only picked up channels like Arkansas Reading for the Blind (a black screen with a voice, reading) so we eventually gave up & just lived with nothing.We went without cable from February to October last year & once I got used to not having cable I found myself not really missing it.  I had more time.  We listened to the radio, went on walks, & supplemented tv with Hulu, Redbox, & Netflix.  

Once my father in law came to visit he was worried we didn't have cable & offered to get us a minimum package as a Christmas present.  We agreed, dropped our Netflix subscription, & had all of the local channels, the home shopping channels (why or why?), TBS, CMT, the speed channel, & the outdoor channel for $15 a month.  Admittedly it was nice during storm season to be able to turn on the tv & see live doppler, but my addiction rapidly grew over the year, & I found myself being sucked back in.

Now that it's summer & most of our regular shows aren't on we started Netflix again.  I also realized that our "cable" has gone up to $20, which seems obnoxiously high for the handful of channels that we actually watch.  I'm thinking of pulling the plug again, but I feel conflicted about it.  I really like reading more, getting outside, & actually being forced to keep up on chores out of boredom, but if we cut our cable that means no tv.  Not even Sesame Street.  I don't know what E would do without her daily fix, but I'm not so sure I want her addicted like her mama either. 

It's just so dang hard to give up on that addiction...