Tonight, we did something wild…

…and turned off the television.

As you know, I’m taking the summer off from many things and one of those happens to be sitting home night after night watching tv.  First of all, there’s nothing good on.  Secondly, it’s summer! and I don’t want to sit home doing nothing and being tempted to eat.  This is why I started doing theatre back in January 2009 again – gotta keep busy and outta the fridge every night.

Tonight, I had plans to come home and hop in the car to take a quick run to the beach club for a dip in the pool.  Unfortunately, it started raining, and the weather took and unfavorable turn even once the rain stopped.  No pool for me.

After a pretty sensible dinner at home and a solid hour and a half of TV shows we had DVR’d, I was bored.  I told Ran, “Okay, I’m done with TV for tonight” and we turned the sucker off.

Let’s face it – TV is great because it’s the ultimate tonic.  It lulls you to sleep, it distracts you from your problems, it keeps you chilled out on the couch, it never challenges you or makes you sweat.  I mean, there’s a reason they call it the boob tube, right?  I’m not saying I’m going to become one of those people who says, “Oh I don’t even own a TV” – because frankly, Ran will divorce me.  But seriously, people occupied themselves for thousands of years before there was TV, or Pinkberry or even a printed book.  We used to be more creative back then as a society.  People read books (once available), told stories, had conversations! Wild! Right?

While they were doing all this (telling of stories, etc) they were also not eating mindlessly.  The “snack” hadn’t been invented yet and in order to eat some food, you had to cook it, clean it, and in some cases, kill it!  It took a lot of effort to eat something, so you did it carefully.  You only ate when you were hungry, instead of out of boredom.  You didn’t just chomp into a bag of Doritos for fun!  (what an idea, eating crap for fun).

So Marie and Ran Isner took a stand on Monday night and stopped eating, stopped boob tubing and actually did something productive for once.  And, you know what?  We enjoyed it.  We had a few laughs, talked with each other, and worked on our wedding photo album.  Since our 1 year anniversary is rapidly approaching, it seemed time to actually sit down and do the album, with no distractions.

I challenge you to turn off the TV once in a while, or better yet, don’t even turn it on some nights and see what might develop.  Oh, and put down the Doritos, even for fun.