Month: August 2017

Cutting the cord

Like any parent should, I love to regale my kids of the times of my youth, when we had to take on the world without the luxuries they enjoy today.

I tell them of how we had to remember actual phone numbers, and further amaze them with the fact my phone number as a kid was only five numbers. Bonus points if I throw in we dialed on a rotary phone.

I tell them how we had to go and knock on neighbors’ doors to get a pick-up game started. No texting for us in the hard-scrabble upbringing of the 80s.

But most of all, I remind them that we did not have the videos on demand they have now. While I sorta (I think) remember the times of just four channels, what I really grew up with was a basic cable package that served up 32 channels and the occasional free weekend of HBO and Cinemax.

Side story: Cinemax gave us a free weekend when I was somewhere around 12. They showed R-rated movies during the day, which my mom told me I was not allowed to watch. I assured her I would not. And I then proceeded to watch a daytime airing of “The Shining,” which is very much rated R. It was one of my great inner-crises when I could not sleep for the next, oh, month or so, but couldn’t spill the beans that it was because I had watched an R-rated movie without my parents knowing. It’s also why I cannot watch horror movies to this day. Thanks, Stanley Kubrick!

Anywho, back on point, so I consistently tell them how much better their life is today than when I was a kid growing up. So imagine my kids’ shock and dismay when I told them I was getting rid of cable TV.

Among the reactions:

“What about football games?”

“What about Jeopardy!?”

“What about Disney channel?”

My answers were, “We’ll still get them” and “We’ll still watch it” and “Seriously, you’re 17. When is the last time you watched Disney channel?”

Responses: “Cool, “Cool,” and “Good point.”

So I am not going Amish here. I am simply cutting the cable cord and going to the future with how we view television. My wife and I had been talking, and we realized our cable bill had steadily crept over the past few years. And we also realized that we pretty much watched Jeopardy! and sports. We’re not anti-TV folks. We just don’t really watch a lot on TV. My kids’ TV diet mostly consists of Netflix and YouTube on their phones. So I started looking at options.

I ended up settling for an over-the-air antenna for local programming (Jeopardy! – check) and an Amazon Fire TV Stick for all other viewings (sports – check).

We will be able to cut our bill dramatically, and will still be able to consume the stuff we normally consume, which really isn’t all that much.

I am sure the new world of TV we have embarked on will be fine. We will have our bumps in the road, sure. I have explained to my kids (and thus kinda to myself) that there will be some things we find that are different with our new set up. This is a different way of media consumption, and when we find things that are different from our previous ways of doing things, rather than get upset about it, we will find new solutions. This is a whole new era of TV, and we are going to embrace it and be champions of the new world.

But in the end, I think we will all be better off and learn a new way of watching TV together as a family. And if anyone grouses about it, I’ll just order up a family movie night and we can all watch “The Shining” together. That’ll teach ‘em…

Mike Gibbons was born and raised in Aiken, S.C. A graduate of the University of Alabama, he now lives in Mt. Pleasant. You can e-mail him at scmgibbons@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @StandardMike.

Childhood Family

Wait, wait, don’t call me. Until 11.

Post author By Mike Gibbons
Post date August 21, 2017
No Comments on Wait, wait, don’t call me. Until 11.

My daughter and I were in the car the other day, listening to a stand-up special we had downloaded from Netflix.

Before I continue, please take a moment to realize how awesome that is: I pushed a couple of places on my phone screen and an hour-long stand-up special was suddenly playing over my car speakers via, I guess, magic. Or maybe technology. Who really knows.

Anywho, the special was from comedian Hasan Minajh, who is an eloquent and gifted storyteller. His special weaves in both stories of his life as a first-generation American with immigrant parents as well as general stories from life.

One of his bits was about being a child and dreading when the phone would ring, out of fear that your parents would answer it before you. It’s a great bit, and I won’t unfurl it here, as you should listen to him tell it, as it’s his comedy.

That said, I told my daughter, “You will never know the struggle of trying to make a late night phone call with a friend.”

She gave me the look that can only be interpreted as, “You’re old.”

“Look,” I said. “You’ve got it great. You can talk to your friends whenever you want. You can text, call, Snapchat whenever you want, and you can do this in your room.”

Again, Dad is old.

That’s when I decided to lay out the “I walked five miles uphill to school both ways in snow and the occasional lava flow” for my generation.

“You don’t know what it’s like to try and coordinate a late-night call with someone using call-waiting and the movie listings recording!”

Blank stare.

It occurred to me that my daughter has no idea what call-waiting is (was?) or that there was a time when you had to call the movie theater and listen to a recording of what was playing when.

That second one hit her especially hard. “That seems awful…” Indeed, child. The struggle was real.

I explained to my daughter that if you wanted to talk to someone late at night, without your parents being woken up, you had a very well coordinated strategy.

Step one: Synchronize your watches. Gotta get on the same time page.

Step two: Designate a time for said phone call. 11:00 was usually a good time, as parents were presumably asleep.

Step three: First person calls the movie theater at 10:59 to listen to the recordings of movie show times. (“Adventures in Babysitting will be playing at…” “Revenge of the Nerds 2: Nerds in Paradise will be playing at…”

Step four: Second person calls your home number at 11:00.

Step five: Click over to accept call.

Step six: Victory. And a 30-minute conversation about probably some of the stupidest stuff ever uttered into a phone.

My daughter’s response: “That seems like a lot of work just to talk to your friend.”

A lot of work indeed, child. A lot of work indeed. We did the heavy lifting of the 80s that I can only hope ushered in the era of technology that lets you communicate ad nauseum with your friends into the wee hours of the night without disturbing your parents.

I am sure my daughter has a new appreciation of the struggles of my youth and is now eternally grateful for how easy her life is compared to the hard scrabble world of an 80s kid. Should she, at some point, fail to show that grasp of the divide between our worlds, I will have no choice but to sit her down and have a long talk about what encyclopedias and card catalogs are.

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You gotta be quick…

There are two things I firmly believe – order and karma.

OK, there are quite a few other things I believe in, but that list could get kinda long. “I believe that dogs are neat. I believe Marvel movies are quite entertaining…”

But back to order and karma. One of the finest ways order is brought to this world is through the very simple process of lines. You stand in line. You wait your turn. Pretty much should have this mastered by kindergarten.

For what it’s worth, queue lines are even better, because those force us into line cattle-style, thereby curbing some people’s urge to kinda amble through the line as if it were just a big blob of a crowd.

When there are not queues, you have to stay alert, for some people clearly were not paying attention in kindergarten.

My son and I at were at a place recently where there were lots of lines, but not lots of queues. At one section, there were some space shuttle simulators. No queues. Both simulator seats were occupied, and my son was the only one waiting. No problem. As the girl in front of him finished her turn, she went to exit the simulator. My son went to take his turn when – zoooom! Like a flash, a kid a few years younger than him went darting in front of him, sliding into the seat and starting the simulator.

The mom of the girl who had just been in the simulator turned to me, laughed and said, “You gotta be quick, huh?”

“Or, people could have manners and not cut in line,” I responded. She responded, “Seriously?” I told my son we’d go find another thing to do, as clearly our conversation was not going to get any better.

Fast forward a few hours later. We were in line for another attraction at the facility, a ropes course. This had a queue line, so order was fairly in place. As we neared the front of the line, I looked a few spots up and saw Ms. Seriously. I turned to my son, leaned in and whispered, “Hop the queue and jump in front of her. I’ll tap her on the shoulder and say, ‘You gotta be quick, huh?’” My son gave me a somewhat terrified look.

“Ummm….” he said.

“I’m kidding. Relax.” He seemed relieved. He also seemed like he MIGHT have gone through with it had I not told him I was kidding, which makes me a smidge concerned.

Anywho, back to karma. Now, I am not one for a vengeful, punishing, life altering karma. That’s a little too high stakes for my liking. I like the karma of mild inconvenience. Fail to wave to someone who let you into traffic? You deserve to hit the next eight red lights. Tip absurdly low amount for perfectly fine service? Cold fries next time you order at a drive-through. Fail to return your grocery cart? Consideration for imprisonment in the Phantom Zone dimension from Superman. (OK, maybe I’m a little stricter on the last one.)

For those of you not familiar with ropes courses, you are walking on beams and ropes pretty high up in air, while tethered to a harness. A series of platform connect each obstacle. As you get to a platform, you generally take turns crossing. One side makes their way across, then the other side goes across. Order.

I found myself on the platform with Ms. Seriously. We didn’t chat. I was waiting at the platform for my son to get there, so I had time to kill. She made her way to the beam, getting ready to cross. A person on the other side started across. Only one person can be on the obstacle at a time, so she stepped back to the platform. As the person finished crossing, she went to step off the platform. Again, from the other side, here comes a person. Back on the platform. I sat and watched as four straight people crossed the obstacle, causing her to retreat and – I kid you not – huff loudly and say, “SERIOUSLY?”

Now is where I think we all should I agree that I deserve an award, perhaps even a medal, for NOT saying, “You gotta be quick, huh?”

But had I said that, I would have probably been setting myself up for some mild karmic retribution. The universe had paid her back for laughing at us getting cut in line. No sense in keeping it going.

So order and karma. That’s what we need. And we should always keep looking forward. Otherwise, I’d have to wonder why the karma was being paid to us when the kid cut in front of us…