Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
In Which I Ponder Joe's Amazement That I Watch Substantial TV
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2006 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
You know what's really depressing? When I could have been learning Lisp or Kannada or organic chemistry or the piano, I was watching multiple episodes of
- Full House
- Family Matters
- Punky Brewster
- Small Wonder
- Perfect Strangers
- Home Improvement
- Friends
- ER
- The Cosby Show
- Blossom
- Murder, She Wrote
- Sabrina, The Teenage Witch
- Boy Meets World
- Caroline In The City
- Growing Pains
- Charles In Charge
- Who's The Boss?
- Mr. Belvedere
and I don't know how many other forgettable shows. I've also watched a lot of Seinfeld, Mad About You, Star Trek, Animaniacs, Batman: The Animated Series, Bill Nye The Science Guy, Square One TV, Law & Order, The Practice, House, The Daily Show, Arrested Development, America's Test Kitchen, Good Eats, and other stuff that seems more worthwhile to me than the sitcoms and dramas in the first list. But there was still a horrible lot of time wasted.
I don't know why my parents let me watch so much TV; maybe they thought I worked hard at school the rest of the time so I should get to relax in front of the tube sometimes. And God knows I read enough for three kids even though I watched a lot of TV. I had hardly any friends (at least ones that I spent substantial outside-school time with) between sixth and twelfth grades, so that left a lot of time for homework, reading, and TV.
Still. How many hours was that? I envy the imaginary person I would be had I eschewed all those useless shows on my first list. I can't even imagine the person I'd be if I had never seen the others.
