Tuesday, June 18, 2013

It was all our daughter Rebecca’s fault.  She worked as a biologist on the north slope of Alaska 10 years or so ago counting birds.  It’s tough work, but I guess someone has to do it.  She has also counted birds in Prince William Sound and assisted in dissecting dead Sea Otters, but when she wasn’t counting birds in Barrow, there wasn’t much else to do, so she watched television. When she came home, she told us that we really needed to watch  “24”.  At that time we really weren’t TV watchers.  We get only sporadic and poor broadcast reception, and have resisted cable or satellite because we didn’t need a reason to watch more TV.  Whenever a TV would go on in our home in the past, you could hear a loud sucking sound as the time and brains were sucked away together.  We didn’t start watching “24” immediately, but after her occasional admonitions, I found the Season 1 set at the library and we began watching it.  We were indeed sucked in.  At that time, 3 seasons had been released on DVD and we set about watching those three seasons.  If you haven’t seen the series, the concept is that an anti-terrorist team with the reluctant help of Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) has to alleviate a crisis in 24 hours.  Since most seasons of regular programming have about 24 episodes, it is convenient to show one hour of the crisis per week.  When you cheat, however, and have the entire season on DVD, you can watch more than one hour a week.  And if you are truly inspired, you can veg away an entire day and see the entire crisis resolved in the same time period.  Now I don’t know that we ever devoted an entire 24 hour period to a single season, but we did watch Season 3 in 48 hours.  Okay.  I’ve confessed.  We became addicted.  But because we didn’t get broadcast television and were without cable, we would impatiently wait for the next season to be released on DVD, and then buy it and watch it.  And then while we were waiting for Jack Bauer’s exploits in a new season, we began to sample other shows.  We watched all the seasons of Jennifer Garner in Alias.  Then we tried Grey’s Anatomy and are still hooked on it as Season 9 just finished.  The girls in my office got us watching White Collar and Castle and Psych, and we follow Grimm and Once Upon A Time, watching them online and after the fact.  Now we really don’t waste time that we would be doing anything productive to watch any of these shows. Only sleeping.  We usually don’t even start watching until about 9 PM, but then the sucking noise is just the juice we would normally have the next day leaving our bodies.  Or rather,  leaving my body.  I start seeing patients at 7 AM while my beautiful wife has a little more recovery time in the morning. And that is why she is always so beautiful….she is entertained in the evening and rejuvenated through the morning.