Oh, how the memories you speak of tell the story of my life! We had one of those antennas as well, just like everyone else. I’m not going to let it replace my memories. The phone has already replaced my camera, newspaper, alarm clock, map, calendar, television, radio, and mailbox. Without ever sending a text message or shooting video. We did all this without ever once snapping a photograph of it.
We wandered into the woods to start campfires, build forts, dam creeks, make rope swings, and try to injure each other by throwing sticks that looked like boomerangs.
ON THE ROOFTOP SHOUT IT OUT SKIN
We had tetanus-covered tornado slides that would peel the skin right off your shoulder blades. We did this by shaking winners’ hands, then going to the parking lot to key their cars. Losers dealt with their rejection maturely. When we played baseball, for example, we had winners and losers. Our parents didn’t shield us from rejection.
ON THE ROOFTOP SHOUT IT OUT TV
“She can’t play right now,” Rachel’s mother would say.īecause Rachel was off hanging the laundry, darning her socks, waxing the floors, painting her house, or performing some other hapless chore we in the TV generation had to do.Īnd you dealt with this rejection. Then, do you know what you did? You knocked on the door and engaged in a conversation with an actual adult. Then, you got on your bike and you pedaled 129 miles, uphill, through the sleet, until you got to your buddy’s place. On non-school days, you told Mama you were going to a friend’s house. Even foot washing Baptists who didn’t own TVs had bikes. As a kid, the primary entertainment tool was your bike. Then you’d go back to watching interior paint dry.Īlthough we were the TV generation, our main entertainment device wasn’t the boob tube. This was a brilliant little machine that could add and subtract.Īlso, you could type in the numbers 7734, turn the calculator upside down, and the digital numbers would form the world “HELL.” You would do this for hours.
Our lives were computer-less except for the Texas Instruments calculator in your old man’s desk drawer. We couldn’t go “online” and rewatch episodes later. Our generation had to live in the moment. So you had to do your business quickly at the toilet, being careful not to push too hard so as not to damage important urinary sphincters. No do-overs.Īnd if, by chance, you had to get up to pee during an important program, there was no “pause” button. You had one shot to watch your program with the rest of the world. We did this even if it wasn’t convenient because, here’s the thing, there were no second chances. When your program started, the whole family gathered into one room. Such as, “The Lawrence Welk Show,” or “Mother Angelica Live.” Thus, fundamentalist families like mine planned entire days around our family-based programs. This is why many evenings, everyone’s fathers just drank beer on the roof. Which would unground the signal and ruin everything. The picture would be clear for exactly six seconds until your old man let go of the antenna. “Okay, stop! No, wait! Go back! STOP! HOLD IT!” “Wait! Wait!” your mother would shout to him. To reorient your antenna for a better signal, your mother stood downstairs, watching the screen, shouting commands through an open window to your old man, who was on the roof, painstakingly turning the antenna. Whenever the TV picture got fuzzy, the antenna could be easily pointed in different directions so that absolutely nothing would happen. The antenna stuck out of your rooftop and looked like the weather vane from hell. This antenna was made of aircraft aluminum and picked up exactly four channels: Channel 4, Channel 5, Channel 9, and Fred Rogers. We were like a lot of blue-collar families. The only tablets we had were the ones Moses gave us.
ON THE ROOFTOP SHOUT IT OUT MOVIE
No movie channels playing on iPad tablets. Commercials wherein a strange older man reminded housewives not to suggestively squeeze toilet tissue. We did not “stream.” We did not “binge-watch.” Episodes didn’t “drop.” We had commercial breaks wherein tiny men rowed little boats around inside toilet bows. Specifically, my family had a Zenith console TV that was about the size of a Waffle House. A few kids had TVs in their actual bedrooms, but these were kids known as “brats.” Some families had two TVs, but these were rich families.
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