1%.

One percent of the population of the US does not watch any TV. I don't know if there are grades of abstinence. Whether you are included in this exclusive one percent if say, like me, we have a big ass, movie house of a set, but no cable. No connection. Really, we don't watch tv.

This is not because I am some holier than thou bitch. It is completely selfish. TV annoys me. I felt a thankful kinship with the Globe writer who outed herself as another member of the 1% in the Sunday Globe Magazine a couple weeks ago. I'm not alone!

It's not just because there is nothing on (truly, the only show on now I would watch is Wired) but the commercials. The constant break of concentration. If I was lucky enough to have a show I really enjoyed, why would I want to watch it, only to be yanked out of my enjoyment by ten minutes of commercials every fifteen minutes? Ah, you may say. TiVo or some such recording program can bypass all those things. But I am too lazy. If I can rent the DVD from Netflix, I sure as hell don't need to fork out the cash or the time to set up a program to winnow through the shit and filter out the gold.

I'm not sure how the annoyance factor breaks down. It could be a ratio of 80% annoyance at commercials to 20% annoyance at time spent clicking through bullshit. Or vice versa.

It wasn't always this way. When I was a kid, I was a TV junkie. Here is just a little of what I remember zoning out to, in no particular order: Grizzly Adams; Good Times; The Jeffersons; Fat Albert; Little House on the Prairie; Julia Child; Sesame Street; The Electric Company; Mr Rogers; The Love Boat (and Fantasy Island, of course); The Gong Show (remember Chuck Barris? That HAIR?), The Price is Right; every holiday special I could stay up for; Barnie Miller; Taxi; Cheers; MASH (oh, how I loved MASH); Silver Spoons; Punky Brewster; All in the Family; Get Smart; That Girl; Mary Tyler Moore; The Facts of Life; Family Ties; MacGyver; Murder She Wrote; Magnum PI; Charlie's Angels; Marcus Welby M.D.; Leave It to Beaver; the A Team; Hollywood Squares; The Bionic Man; The Bionic Woman; Wonder Woman; Batman; Hawaii Five-O; Quantum Leap; Fame; Old classic movies; every musical ever made; after school specials; all those “back to nature” movies with the horrible child non-actors one suspected of being “hired” by the producer or director but who were really sons or daughters who wanted to play on the big screen...

I could go on, but by now, you get the idea. I was a teen couch spud.

I'm not sure when it all changed for me. It may have started the year I graduated from high school, and for all intents and purposes, stopped watching. I traveled, I went to college, I didn't have time for it. So by the time I was working nine to five, and had the time again, I watched. But now, there were channels like the cartoon network, and Turner, and HBO. Suddenly I didn't have to deal with commercials. I also realized that there was not as many things I was interested in watching. Beakman, Dexter's Lab, Space Ghost Coast to Coast were regular fare. But these were all short-lived indulgences. We watched Homicide and taped almost every episode. Never watched them a second time, though. What exactly were we taping them for? The VHS tapes are slowly disintegrating in boxes in the basement. We never really talked about what we watched with our friends either. Our tastes were too esoteric.

Of course there were reruns. But there were only so many times I could swallow another episode of Andy Griffith or the inevitable Brady Bunch without my feeling guilty afterwards for such a pathetic waste of time. I'd been there, done that. Then I began to be annoyed with the “personalities”. The talk show hosts, the newscasters. Then the stupidity of new sitcoms. The same old things, over. And over. And over.

Then, med school started, and financially, we had to make some choices. DSL or cable. It wasn't a difficult choice. We walked away from the cable easily enough. I was done. The addiction was routed, and I kissed the tube goodbye. Netflix now sends us our Wired episodes, which we barely find time to watch, let alone the other 300+ movies and animes in our Q. It is more than enough.

As for the Impling, I doubt she would have the interest to sit and watch even if we were inclined to let her watch, which we aren't. There are numerous reasons for this. First, I've no interest in mucking through what looks at a glance to be horribly insipid and stupid and badly animated children's shows to find one that's actually worth watching. I don't want to train her in how to watch. I don't want to deal with a whiny toddler demanding Elmo's or Disney Princesses or neon breakfast cereals. I do want to give the National Association of Pediatritians the benefit of the doubt as they reiterate over and over that TV for children is not so good. They recommend limiting TV viewing to 2 hours a day (for the over 2 set...no TV at ALL for the wee ones). This boggles my mind. Two HOURS? There is the transit time to the Science Museum for us, or a good tramp to a playground, or a new train track creation. Or reading. Or drawing. Or dancing.

So no TV. No DVD's. And sometimes, it's hard. Like when I have a bad cold and there's nothing I'd love more than curling up on the sofa and showing the Impling an old Gene Kelly musical. But I know, as soon as I start, there will be no going back. So I wait, visions of tap shoes dancing in my head, until the Impling and I are ready.

"Let's do some tracks now Mommy!"