One Family’s Screen Test
If an outside observer had wandered past our TV room last weekend, an odd sight awaited: My husband Greg and I were singing hymns to our flat screen. A few minutes later, we were saying prayers to it. Just the night before, we lifted our martini glasses to it. Later in the week, we sang Happy Birthday to the flat screen (even though it wasn’t the flat screen’s birthday — it wasn’t even the day we brought it home from Best Buy).
In our house, we have 12 flat screens of various sizes (I counted). At any one time during the day, about half of them are on. They ding, and we pay attention. They are quite demanding. But what would we do without them?
All this week, our nephew Damian, home from college for the semester, was speaking Chinese to his flat screen early every morning. On Wednesday, he was having a frank discussion with it about gender and sexuality issues in ancient Greece. At about the same time (in a different room), I was calling for a vote to accept the minutes of our last meeting. That night, I was cursing the flat screen for not letting me sign up for curbside pick-up at the local Liquor Control Board outlet. We were reconciled the next day as the flat screen and I had coffee together. I found myself laughing later that afternoon as the flat screen shared some ridiculous meme.
On Thursday, I found out that I would no longer have to sing to the flat screen, which I had been doing to practice the bass part for a Masterworks Chorale concert that is now cancelled. I will miss those rehearsals, though I think hymn singing is still on the docket for Sunday. Members of Swarthmore Presbyterian Church were informed that we will be having communion with our flat screens starting this week.
I think all this interaction with our devices is helping recreate the kind of community we once took for granted. Cocktails with friends and family across the country, coffee with the folks who used to meet at the Co-op on Fridays, and “meetings” where we can actually see each other, sometimes for the first time in weeks. They’ve all become really important events. With all of us in this together, there is no “outside observer” to tell us how absurd this might look!
So whether it’s for a cocktail, a coffee, or communion, we raise a glass to thee, O Flat Screen!
