Here and Now...and Yet To Come

Dru and I decided to take a walk last night. It was nice. For some reason earlier in the day I was thinking about what song I would sing if I tried out for American Idle. So of course, during our walk Dru and I were picking out and practicing the song that I would sing. (We decided on Somewhere Over the Rainbow because it shows range and the ability to jump from note to note very well.) This got us thinking about how last night was the last night of the only good part of American Idle. You know before they narrow down to the people that can actually sing. The part where you get to see and hear the people who, and I will be nice here, can't sing. Anyway, when we returned from the walk I turned the t.v. on to watch the ensuing train wreck. I turned the T.V. on and then turned the VCR on because our cable runs through the VCR. All I got was a Blue Screen. Some of you might make it equivalent to the Blue Screen of Death on your computer but for me it was a welcome relief.

"The Cable is gone!" I shouted.

Dru decided to surprise me with cable around the time of my birthday. (10-30-81) Since this was the height of football season I was very grateful. I have to admit. It was nice having all of those channels to veg out on. I could flip to the golf channel and get my golf fix at any time of the day. I could put ESPN on and get my sports fix. I could even put SPIKE T.V. on at lunch time and get my Star Trek: Next Generation fix. (I know I'm a nerd) I began to notice that I could satisfy all of my T.V. fixes, but in order to do this I had to sacrifice many other things that I love to do. For instance, the number of books that I read in relation to owning cable drastically dropped. The number of evenings that I spent in quiet talking to my wife drastically dropped. The amount of time I spent pondering and reading and thinking theology drastically dropped. Cable soon became the weight that was dragging me to the suffocating depths of the ocean floor.

Admittedly I liked it, but not enough for my marriage or my spiritual life to suffer. So we canceled it. On January 9th, we stopped payments. It has taken the company this long to shut it off. A part of me misses the "options" that cable provides, but a much larger part of me is relieved to know that am now "free" to swim to the surface and take a breath again.

Adam