I haven't told a lot of people this, but until I was ten years old, my family didn't have a TV. My parents decided before I was born that they didn't want their children to grow up desensitized and over saturated with popular media. Because of this, I was a little behind as a child. Barney? Saw him once at my grandparents' house. Dora the Explorer? She's the hispanic lady next door who walks around the neighborhood looking for loose change. Teletubbies? Sounds like an STD that small children are unnecessarily frightened of.
I found my refuge from otherwise interminable boredom in books. Though when I started reading it was a chore, I experienced a moment in second grade that has impacted my entire life. My parents had been reading "Harry Potter" to me at night to try to get me interested in reading, but it wasn't until I picked it up off the couch and started to read it independently that I was enthralled by it. And ever since that moment, I have enjoyed reading immensely. It was the perfect entertainment: It was light, didn't need electricity, and could be taken anywhere. I was set for life.
Or so I thought. Unfortunately, my peers had not been similarly restrained by their parents, something I found out in sixth grade as it became increasingly obvious that I was out of the loop. At this time we had a television, my parents finally having succumbed to the mounting pressure (and an encroaching hurricane). Poor adolescent me, however, was left without knowledge of The Rugrats, The Simpsons, and similar cartoons (Do all cartoon titles start with the word "The"?). It was this feeling of social estrangement that led me, in the middle of my sixth grade year, to seek asylum at the Texas Military Institute, a private school in the area. My social ineptitude was still there, but less noticeable in the small student body of rich kids and nerds.
Today I like to think that my lack of a television for the early part of my life has given me an endearingly witty sense of humor, intelligence, and a mind to use it. To my peers I am still an anomaly, and I am sure many of them would disagree with my previous assessment of myself. In the end, there's not really anything I can do but sit back, crack open a book, and read about someone else's hopefully more significant problems.
I found my refuge from otherwise interminable boredom in books. Though when I started reading it was a chore, I experienced a moment in second grade that has impacted my entire life. My parents had been reading "Harry Potter" to me at night to try to get me interested in reading, but it wasn't until I picked it up off the couch and started to read it independently that I was enthralled by it. And ever since that moment, I have enjoyed reading immensely. It was the perfect entertainment: It was light, didn't need electricity, and could be taken anywhere. I was set for life.
Or so I thought. Unfortunately, my peers had not been similarly restrained by their parents, something I found out in sixth grade as it became increasingly obvious that I was out of the loop. At this time we had a television, my parents finally having succumbed to the mounting pressure (and an encroaching hurricane). Poor adolescent me, however, was left without knowledge of The Rugrats, The Simpsons, and similar cartoons (Do all cartoon titles start with the word "The"?). It was this feeling of social estrangement that led me, in the middle of my sixth grade year, to seek asylum at the Texas Military Institute, a private school in the area. My social ineptitude was still there, but less noticeable in the small student body of rich kids and nerds.
Today I like to think that my lack of a television for the early part of my life has given me an endearingly witty sense of humor, intelligence, and a mind to use it. To my peers I am still an anomaly, and I am sure many of them would disagree with my previous assessment of myself. In the end, there's not really anything I can do but sit back, crack open a book, and read about someone else's hopefully more significant problems.
