Monday, March 8, 2010

the drama of daytime tv

so today . . . i was home sick. yes, again. it came on suddenly last night, and i still had a temperature this morning, so there was no way i could go to school. i woke up long enough to realize that, and call my school's director to tell her that i was not going to make it to school because i was sick. yes, again.

i've been sick a lot this year, as you all know. and you also know that i blame my students who come to school sick. even today, apparently one of my little dumplings came to school and told the substitute he had already thrown up four times! "then why are you at school?" she reasonably asked. "because my mom has to go to work," was his answer.

see, i am not kidding you--this is why i keep getting sick.

but this time was different. this time i spent the day in bed. i did not get up and eat breakfast (i could not even imagine ingesting food!) i did not get up and plop myself on the couch with my puppies and my computer (although my loyal pooch did keep me company--the chubby one chose to ignore us . . . ) i stayed in bed and tried not to move for fear of irritating my upset stomach or my aching head. i slept as much as i could, but there came a point where i couldn't sleep, i couldn't get up, i couldn't read, so my only other option was--duh, duh, duuuhhhh--daytime tv.

yes, daytime tv.

i don't watch daytime tv much anymore. usually i am at work during the day, but even in the summer i find that if i have free time, i either watch shopping tv or stuff i have tivoed or i read a book. and today i realized why.

daytime tv is a desert.

i haven't watched soap operas since i was in college--i have plenty of drama in my own life without getting involved in the fictional drama of fictional people who inhabit a fictional town. and who, btw, ALWAYS make the wrong choice. always. every decision they make makes their lives more complicated. maybe if they had to go to the grocery store or the post office or balance a checkbook or do laundry or punch a time clock or put a toddler to bed, they wouldn't have so many problems. of course, then no one would probably watch . . .

so my choices were daytime talk shows (more drama and bad choices,) news (real life drama and unsolved mysteries,) or court shows (real people and ridiculous problems.) i chose news and judges. i decided it didn't make that much difference since i wasn't really watching anyway--i planned to doze. the tv was just on for white noise to distract the pooches so that they wouldn't bark everytime they heard a noise outside. so i chose a channel, turned the volume low, and settled in to sleep.

but i didn't sleep--not much anyway. i kept getting sucked in. to the commercials. i heard the same commercials over and over and over again. there were commercials for technical and trade schools, commercials for debt relief, commercials for weight loss systems, commercials for personal injury lawyers, and commercials for depression studies. over and over and over again. apparently advertisers think that if you are home watching tv during the day you must be unemployed, in debt, over weight, and depressed. and if i was home watching this programming every day, i don't know about the rest of it, but i would certainly be depressed!

so i guess even though i HATE getting up in the mornings, and my students are trying to slowly kill me with germs, and i never seem to have enough time to do everything i need to do, i am glad that i have a job. because daytime tv would turn me into a jelly donut.

if i ever lose my job, i will have to get cable . . .

1 comment:

mom said...

Your blog is exactly why I don't turn on my TV during the day and seldom turn it on at night (I do watch O'Reilly, of course) and I pay for cable. Believe me, there are many evenings when there is nothing to watch on cable either, except a great classic country station that plays great music all the time. That's the station I leave on for the dog on the days I work. Guess it's good for something.