In 1974, I was 13 years old when television first arrived in my hometown in India. It was black and white and had just a couple of hours of programming, primarily targeting the farmers. We were thrilled that they had one movie every week! We were a typical middle-class family, so buying a TV wasn’t quite a priority for us, back then. So every week, we’d go to my friend Ravi’s house to watch the movie. The entire neighborhood would show up, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder. This is when I first discovered shows like “Different Strokes” and “I Love Lucy”, and thought, “Wow, I wonder if America has more sitcoms like this!”
Fast-forward to 1983 — I arrived in Iowa for grad school, and the number of TV channels here just blew my mind. It was like taking a starving man to a buffet. Almost immediately, I made it my mission to watch every single show. I soaked up American pop culture like I was training for a future “80s trivia night”! I’m still surprised that I actually graduated! I mean, how could you study when “The Jeffersons” were “movin’ on up” and Jack Tripper was rooming with Janet and Cindy?
I loved that there was a glossy 20-30 page TV Guide! Every week, I’d mark my favorite shows with a yellow highlighter, as if it were one of my textbooks. My lineup included old Bob Hope movies, Groucho Marx, and sitcoms galore — Andy Griffith, Barney Miller, Three’s Company, Family Ties, and “Sanford and Son”. My GPA was dropping, but my pop-culture IQ was through the roof!
When I got my first job, my first big purchase wasn’t furniture or a car. It was a 19-inch Sony Trinitron. That TV was my best friend. My only friend, actually. If you ask me about Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where I lived back then — I have no idea what it looked like outside. I never left my apartment! My evenings followed a sacred ritual: News, Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune, and then one sitcom after another, all the way through Johnny Carson and Nightline with Ted Koppel. Five hours a night! Every-single-night!
Then, in 1988, I moved from Iowa to Pennsylvania — 1,000 miles in my little Toyota Corolla, carrying all my worldly possessions: two suitcases, a Panasonic vacuum cleaner (which still works, by the way), and my first love — Sony. The following year, my wife, Uma, arrived from India. We had an arranged marriage, and she quickly discovered that I was already in a relationship. Within days, she accused me: “You spend more time with that TV than with me!” She was right. I would spend hours staring lovingly at that screen and maybe ten minutes talking to her. But hey, Jeopardy with Alex Trebek was a serious commitment! Our first few fights were about the TV. She’d say, “You’re not interested in me!” and I’d say, “But honey, this is a very special episode of Cheers – when Diane finally says Yes to Sam Malone!”
Over time, Uma successfully weaned me off my addiction. We did watch a few shows together — LA Law, Cheers, and The Cosby Show. When the kids came along, Uma decided that the TV needed to go… to the basement. Not just any basement — an unheated basement. You had to really want to watch TV to go down there. At the time, I thought, “This is cruel and unusual punishment.” But honestly, it worked. The kids didn’t grow up glued to screens, and we actually talked to each other. What a concept!
Years later, once the kids left home, we decided (mostly I) to get a TV for the family room again. Now we have streaming, YouTube, and a million shows — and I find myself scrolling through social media feeds on my phone and flipping through channels while Uma is reminding me about taking the trash out, etc., etc. What can I say, I am good at multitasking! 😊
When I look back at my journey — from Johnny Carson to David Letterman to Arsenio Hall to Colbert and Kimmel — I realize how lucky I was not to have had these distractions growing up. If I’d had Netflix in 1974, trust me, I would still be in high school. That’s why I have so much respect for today’s kids. They’re surrounded by every distraction imaginable — smartphones, tablets, TikTok — and some of them still manage to study and get good grades. That’s definitely superhero stuff! 👌🏾
So, parents — my advice: be like Uma, not like me. Keep the screens away. Maybe even stick the TV in the cold basement — or whatever the equivalent of that is for smartphones! While my first love was my 19-inch Sony Trinitron, my real love, the one who rescued me from it, is right here, reminding me (again) that I forgot to pay the bills!
RecoveringNostalgic 