The Idiot Box

My dad always called it, “the idiot box,” and after reading Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, he left ours on the curb outside our two bedroom house years before I was imagined. Growing up I knew little of television, but as the years crawled on and my parents relaxed and the rules grew soft, televisions started showing up around my house. They were only for movies and rarely flicked on, the cable trucks drove past our house slowly and mystified. Though mostly unused and unkempt, the TV's were there, watching and waiting to strike in the anger of abandonment.

We moved and the idiot box or two came with us, still square and unevenly weighted with one-lipped VCR mouths. The big one was in the basement, crowded out in the corner by the Ping-Pong table where Tom and I had a pretty intense rivalry.

“Tha-a-nk you,” Tom said to my bookshelf as he retrieved the purple marker from it dainty and tauntingly. “Ah, what’s that make it, twenty-four games to eighteen? Hm. Want to lose again?” He made a tick mark on the inside of the bookshelf to indicate his win before he dared to make eye contact with me, at which point he laughed and ran.

I chased him on our newly stained concrete floor that was so slippery my grandmother wasn’t allowed down there without help. We slammed into walls and ran in place like we were learning how to ice skate. Fighting was nearly as impossible as it is in a dream.

“I’m gonna kill you! You’re not even good you’re just lucky!” I screamed as I slid and knocked over the plastic tea set where my little sisters practiced psychologically questionable activities including persons that were not present.

“Heee! Hoo hooo!” Was his only reaction while he dodged and ducked my projectiles.

Tom bolted for the dodgeball that we both saw at the same time. I mostly slid in place but he patiently shuffled and picked up speed until he was close enough to slide the rest of the way. When he was only a few feet away he locked into a slide and began reaching, but just as he touched it, his feet faced the ceiling and he was on his back, still sliding. Like a minor league player who knows scouts are watching he theatrically smashed into the knee height table that was holding the idiot box.

His almost immediate groans let me know that he wasn’t badly hurt so I laughed, thankful to the gods for the justice they served on the menace. As Tom rolled and groaned I slowly made my way toward him to check on him and accept his rematch, but the idiot box had other plans. Balancing just on the edge in zero gravity, the last bump from Tom’s roll set it free like a child’s first jump into the deep end.

I didn’t notice until I heard the crash, “Tom!” his head was just between the broken glass of the TV and the concrete floor. The moaning had stopped. Tom was knocked out cold.