Reading! Listening! Watching! How do those three things play a role in our everyday life? That was the question I asked myself while reading my latest novel. I was almost half-way through A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving when I ran across those three words. The storyline was based on the lives of a boy (11 years old) and his best friend, during the 1950s. The boy and his single Mom lived with her mother. The grandmother had a big influence on her grandson and loved sharing her thoughts on life, like these:
Reading books and newspapers gives us confidence in and familiarity with language, which is a necessary tool for forming those nearly constant comments on what one observes.
Listening to the radio is necessary, as the modern world moves at such a pace that keeping up with it defies the written word. Listening, after all, requires some effort, and the language we hear on the radio is not much worse than the language one increasingly stumbles over in newspapers and magazines.
Watching television was where I, your grandma, draw the line. It is truly more beneficial to the soul, and to one’s intelligence, to read or listen – and what I know is available to watch on television appalls me. Of course, I have only read about it or listened to reports about it on the radio, BUT I have never watched TV in my lifetime.
Well, grandma eventually gave in and bought herself a television. She immediately became a slave to watching TV; but only expressed contempt for everything she watched. She detested TV with such passion and wit that watching it; and commenting on it – sometimes commenting directly to it – became her job. She never read a book again, but she referred to books often, as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned.
As I see it, things haven’t changed a lot from those days. Reading not only helps us with our understanding of language, but how we use it in our conversations with others. Listening to the radio requires us to concentrate on what is being talked about, so our mind is gaining some knowledge of language. But watching TV is a passive action that only requires us to keep our eyes open. Yes, if the volume is turned up loud enough, we might be able to listen to what is being said, but that only moves us up one notch in the standing of these 3 things. Reading is number one.
If you recall, I mentioned that this book was written from the viewpoint of an 11-year-old boy living in the 1950s. I was living as a boy during those same years. The book brought back memories of when we got our first television – black and white, rabbit ears to try and pull in at least one channel, turning on the set and watching the test pattern until the cartoons came on Saturday mornings. My Mom did let me missing a few hours of school once so I was able to watch Don Larson pitch a perfect game in the 1956 World Series. (They played baseball during the day back then.)
The reason I wrote all this out was to see if anyone else would replace a few words and believe I was writing about life in today’s world. It would just be a matter of replacing “television” or “TV” with the word “smartphone” or “cellphone” or whatever the latest device is that the kids are using nowadays.
A special pricing announcement. Adjustments to printing costs for my book
“As I See It” has made it possible to reduce the price to $25. For delivery in person or purchases at the Design House in Sigourney it will be $20. My Monday Morning Musings column will be included. You can find a sample of one at www.neighborsmag.net.
