THE LAST WORD
Rocawich, Linda
THE LAST WORD Linda Rocawich Tubal Ligation When I moved to Wisconsin in November 1985 to work at The Progressive, I left my television set in North Carolina. It wasn't a major life decision,...
...Soon, almost a year was gone, a year without TV...
...And so, on the seventh morning of last October, I realized that the playoffs were about to begin and I had no reliable way to watch...
...That's if I had rent-to-owned a new one...
...In the middle of the thirteenth inning, the bartender decided to close up and go home, leaving me in a worse state of withdrawal than if I'd had no baseball at all...
...I can watch the World Series without owning a phone, a sofa, or a Mustang convertible...
...on my worthiness to rent a television set within a couple of hours of my order...
...A year without television was one thing, but a year without the World Series would be no year at all...
...The baseball part of this experiment was, of course, a resounding success...
...I also got an education in the world of rental appliances, a world I knew nothing about...
...Life without television is back in vogue at my house, but it's probably temporary...
...They probably weren't resourceful enough to find a Madison resident who has actually had a brain transplant...
...Four, to be exact...
...I am almost as addicted to the news as I am to baseball, and TV is better than The New York Times for a quick fix...
...Weeks turned into months...
...Having asked him about the set's age and rental history—I was slightly tempted—I figured out that his take on this set would be $1,038...
...I may be the only American who has never seen the space shuttle explode, and I didn't understand most of the tasteless jokes that made the rounds afterwards because their punch lines were based on television commercials I had never seen...
...The only thing I really missed was The Game of the Week on Saturday afternoons, but I managed an occasional dose of baseball in a neighborhood bar...
...Somehow, I didn't get around to getting a television set...
...This is a weird circle...
...Instead, since I didn't want to keep it, I said a used one was fine by me, as long as it worked for the four weeks I wanted to have it around...
...If I had persisted in making monthly payments on a nine-teen-inch color RCA, I could have owned it after forking over $990...
...I have also tried life without a telephone, life without furniture, and life without a car, and I'm not sure about giving them up...
...I don't know if this is a genuine trend or just an aberration of the local NBC affiliate, but two examples will suffice...
...And then there are the economics, and they are sleazy, friends...
...it was just that I could carry only so much onto the airplane and choices had to be made...
...I also escaped the Statue of Liberty's birthday, including the tall ships and the two hundred Elvis Presley look-alikes...
...On the evening that NBC's movie offering was Unnatural Causes, featuring a Vietnam veteran dying of something related to Agent Orange, the local news did a "special segment" on the suffering of local families whose men were exposed to the herbicide...
...Not bad for a few dozen pounds of tubes and circuits...
...The limitations of this practice were made plain one night when the Brewers and the Rangers were tied up long into the night...
...I was worried when I heard about Who Is Julia?, a TV movie dreamed up by CBS, but the local news team didn't touch it...
...In fact, I have discovered a new trend: TV movies are also news pegs...
...I like M*A*S*H reruns, and I lost out on a year of Dallas, a whole year during which Pam was dreaming that Bobby was dead...
...No piece of plastic is required, but you must have friends...
...Are these topics news because they are the subjects of TV movies, or are they TV movies because they are news...
...On the evening that NBC's movie offering was Kate's Secret, featuring a yuppie housewife afflicted with bulimia (one of a multitude of afflictions now known as "eating disorders"), the local news did a "special segment" on bulimic co-eds at the University of Wisconsin...
...This is the way one buys something on credit without having any credit—rent-to-buy...
...It wasn't a major life decision, leaving the tube behind...
...So I have decided to give up life without television someday soon...
...After the four weeks, the man at the rental outlet offered to give me a great deal on it: For only $ 157 plus tax, it could be mine to keep...
...I chose the sewing machine...
...Anyone who spent the month of October outside a cocoon has heard that the playoffs and Series were the most exciting in memory, and I saw it all—except for the first few innings of one game—and I have the scorecards to prove it...
...Also an employer, a landlord, and relatives, most of whom took calls checking Linda Rocawich is an associate editor of The Progressive...
...And then there are made-for-TV movies, which are today's way to examine our feelings about social problems—things like drug abuse, battered women, telling your parents (or your children) that you're not heterosexual...
...The Yellow Pages saved the day, guiding me to a business that would not only rent me a television set but also deliver it immediately...
Vol. 51 • January 1987 • No. 1
