My Nemesis and Friend

Now that we're home and settling into life with two kids, I'm trying to get into some healthy life habits. The trick is fitting everything in. There's work, the yard, the house, taking care of the kids, and, of course, my work with orphans. At least I think they were orphans. They were all wearing matching t-shirts and eating food off the ground in the park. I guess they could've been kids on a field trip having a picnic. I bet that was it! Idiot! No wonder they looked traumatized when I started crying and screaming at them, "you poor children! Your parents are dead! Your parents are all dead!"

With Kelli still recovering, my share of the load is larger than usual. I'm trying to fit in a couple of hours a day for working out and some spiritual quiet time. It's a work in progress, but not impossible. It's all about time management. But if there's one thing that is likely to throw me off my game, it's -- and I hate to say this, because I'm betraying an old friend -- it's television. It sucks me in like that cross-dimensional vortex thing from the show "Sliders." (It's a classic.) TiVo has only made things worse. Now I know there's always something on I want to watch. And when there's two hours of "The Amazing Race" and a new "My Name is Earl" on the Now Playing list, it's tough to pull yourself away. I NEED to know what happened to the annoying Bronx family. My health can wait.

I'm 35 years old, and there are so many things I've never done. I can't speak a foreign language. I've never finished a Russian novel. I almost never read. I don't know anything about philosophy or the great thinkers. I don't know Bach from Bartok, and I wouldn't know Charles Mingus if his piano fell on my head. I don't even know what instrument Mingus played! Work often catches most of the blame from me, but the real fault lies with television. That wonderful, mind-numbing, taste-lowering, irresistably tacky lightbox television. Damn you, Zworykin and Farnsworth!

But before we throw our TVs out the windows and scream, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" we should stop to consider all the good things TV has done for us.

Without TV, we wouldn't know how many maggots a person can eat in 30 seconds with their hands tied behind their backs. Without TV, we would never consider packing all of our belongings for a 3-hour boat ride. If there were no TV, what would we point our furniture at? Without TV, I wouldn't have been able to steal that last joke from "Friends." No TV would mean I would be limited to watching only a single game on Saturdays, and that would be criminal.

TV has taught us how to find our perfect match -- by competing against 11 other single losers, of course. TV has taught us that if we have dark secrets haunting our relationships, it's best to reveal them to our loved ones in front of the entire world. Jerry Springer is our friend. Thanks to TV, war is finally entertaining again.

Without TV, there would never have been a trained chimp co-hosting the Today Show. When is Katie Couric going to retire, anyway? Great icons of our pop culture heritage would be meaningless: Fonzie's jacket, Archie Bunker's chair, that little robot who said "beedee-beedee-beep" on Buck Rogers.

TV has enriched our lives, flavored our culture and expanded our language. "Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do!" "Bang! Zoom! Right to the moon!" "I think you were a little hard on the Beaver." "Nip it in the bud." "Missed it by that much!" "No soup for you!" "Doh!" I'm not apologizing for TV anymore. It's like the crass uncle you don't want to take to parties to meet your friends, but you can't wait to see when you go home. So my brain may be a little smaller and my worldview a little shallower. Who cares? My name is Wayne, and I'm a television addict -- not that there's anything wrong with that.