Filed under: Your Home, Living Room, Fun Stuff
In our new series, we peek into the lives of people living without standard (and non-standard) home luxuries. This week: My life with no cable.
New Yorkers are trained to live without quite a few things:
Dishwashers, laundry machines -- even dividing walls, sometimes. But today I'm calling out one of the household staples that I've lived without ever since my childhood in California: Cable TV.
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Pretty certain this TV doesn't have cable either. Photo: Age Fotostock
My parents claimed that they skipped cable so that we'd all spend less time in front of the TV but it hardly seemed possible. There I was, watching "
The Simpsons" on Thursday evenings and the late, great
TGIF line-up on Friday nights. My grandmother didn't have cable either, but by some fluke had a channel that was a live feed of a TV guide, scrolling through what was on on every channel. I'd sit in front of that channel for hours, fascinated that so many things were on TV
at that very moment!
No, the absence of cable didn't go far in keeping me away from TV.
I only noticed the issue when friends at school started up conversations. First, about
Nickelodeon shows, later, about
MTV music videos. Why did all my friends know what these bands looked like, while I had only heard them on the radio? And why was I the only one left watching TGIF while my friends tuned in to sexier stuff? I felt like a freak and became self-conscious about our lack of channels beyond the standard 13 and started taking every chance I could to escape to homes with cable. Including, but not limited to, joining my contractor father on jobs to client's houses so I could watch hours of "
Pop-Up Video." Or opting to stay at a sleepover after a friend's parents had just had a wild, awkward fight so I could finish the scandalous MTV show "
Undressed." Or spending hours at the hospital with my grandmother so I could lay in the adjustable bed with her and watch "
Rocko's Modern Life." Now, when the conversation turns to old cable shows, all of my references are tangled with these bizarre experiences.
It was much later when I understood the real reason my parents never got cable: Cable is expensive. And since my parents are terrifically frugal, they simply saw it as one thing we could skip. My new roommates, however, were not frugal. And they talked me into a fully loaded system, complete with HBO, TiVo, OnDemand and just about any amazing thing a TV could do. And for the next six months, I slipped into a hole. With my new cable system, there was an updated version of the low-tech channel I used to watch at my grandmother's house: A magical channel that told me what was on all the time. And because I had TiVo, I could watch it all. Sure, I couldn't sleep as much. And sure, I could cancel plans with friends so I could come home and watch
DietTribe. But I was catching up on
years of limited exposure to TV shows. I owed it to myself to watch as many
Lifetime movies as I possible could fit into a weekend.
I like to think that had my roommates not moved out and taken their cable contract with them, I would have recognized the danger and put an end to the TV-watching myself. But I did do the next best thing: Went back to a cable-free lifestyle and didn't look back. And these days, because it's a personal choice, I don't feel like an outcast when my coworkers extol the virtues of "
Mad Men" or "
True Blood." I'm proud of my thriftiness and freedom from the tyranny of cable shows. I wear it like a badge, proclaiming "Oh, I don't have cable," as if I'm revealing some sort of willpower. Like those people who say "Oh, I don't keep processed foods in the house."
But of course, there's always someone to trump me. "Oh, I
don't even have a TV," they'll say.
Now that's just absurd. Freaks.
Looking for more stories of "living without?" Check out: Living Without: Could You Go a Year With No Dishwasher?
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Getty Images; Coldwell Banker via AOL Real Estate
Coldwell Banker via AOL Real Estate
Coldwell Banker via AOL Real Estate
Coldwell Banker via AOL Real Estate
