I guess it’s Karma that at one point in my life, I produced TV commercials. It was my penance for devising the plot to end all commercials. Or, at least, the ones I didn’t like.
My diabolical plan came back to mind about ten years ago when my youngest was about six-years-old. The Mathis Brothers Furniture Store had come to the valley and they were spending tons of money on cable advertising. They bought so many commercials that they even found themselves airing on children’s channels like Cartoon Network and The Disney Channel. The life of my son revolved around these channels and others like them.
My generation, the Baby Boomers, was supposedly raised on TV. With that supposition, I fully agree. When I was in grade school, I knew the show times and channels of all of my favorite afternoon shows, even before I could read. True, there were only seven channels for us back then, so it may not have been that impressive a feat to tell you when my shows aired, but the show times were logged into my brain and (almost) nothing got in the way of me watching them.
The Adventures of Superman
I was in first grade. I had been learning to read, but hadn’t tackled an adult-sized book such as The TV Guide yet so I sometimes was forced to use my razor sharp intellect to ascertain the air times of certain programs. One day I found The Adventures of Superman on Channel 5 at 3:30pm. Perfect! Within my elephantine memory, I locked away the information that Superman was on every Tuesday at 3:30 in the afternoon. I had plans to be Superman when I grew up and I therefore set my internal TV clock to Tuesdays at 3:30 and I did not miss an episode.
Then, some months later, I happened to be stuck in the house due, most probably, to rain or a childhood illness. It was Thursday and I somehow tuned the TV to channel 5 at 3:30. Superman! Of course! Even at my young age I’d heard of the Monday-Wednesday-Friday sequence and the Tuesday-Thursday sequence. Obviously the geniuses at Channel 5 had scheduled Superman for two days a week!
For the next few weeks I hurried directly home from school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I was glued to the TV for the black & white adventures of Superman, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy. After the show, and the three other weekdays, I played outside with my friends.
It was during one major construction project on a particular afternoon that I stopped my Tonka dump truck in mid dump. Within the recesses of my tiny brain, I experienced the equivalent of today’s abbreviated exclamatory statement: WTF?!
“I’ll be right back!” I called over my shoulder to my friends as I ran into the house. This was the time, if there ever was one, to open the TV Guide and pour myself into the tiny type and unfamiliar layout. I flipped pages back and forth and wrinkled my brow. I had to discern this document to see if my epiphany was accurate.
It was.
It was one of the first times in my life I mumbled to myself, “What an idiot…”
Superman was on every weekday at 3:30! Der! It was so logical in my head that it was on every Tuesday. It was also perfectly logical that it was on twice a week. I had been so proud of myself that I had determined the Tuesday-Thursday schedule, but my logic was so flawed and puny in the golden light of the truth; of the reality of a stripped TV show.
Passing the TV-Watching Torch
Now, many years later, the life of my youngest revolved around TV and his shows. Once, at the age of three, I heard him call to his mother, “Mom! Is it 7:30, 6:30-central yet?!”
Along with those programs, he was being molded into a little consumer. As each commercial passed—at least the ones directed at little boys—he’d say to anyone and everyone within earshot, “I want that.” Even if he was playing with a toy, he heard the commercials in the back ground and would let you know which one(s) he wanted. He did it so often that his mother and I actually noticed once when a commercial passed and he was so busy with the toy in front of him that it aired without comment from him.
A few minutes into his show, he said, “I want that.”
I said, “What?”
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He said, “That (name of toy) from the last commercial.”
Exasperated glances were exchanged behind him.
However, commercials he did not like also bothered him as much as they bothered me at the same age. One day I heard him exclaim from the family room, “I hate you!”
“Who are you talking to?” I said to him, as I walked into the room.
“The Mattress Brothers!” he said, pointing to the commercial on TV.
There were some commercials I just hated!
Ah, the Mathis Brothers had invaded his TV shows, too. And that event brought to mind my ingenious plan to rid myself forever of the commercials I hated when I was in first grade. I watched a lot of TV, but some commercials were just hideous to me. They made me cringe when they were broadcast.
One Sunday morning I found my father at the kitchen table. “Daddy,” I said to him.
“Mmmm hmm?” There were so many of us always asking him questions, that he rarely raised his eyes from his paper to answer.
“How many rolls of string does it take to get to Hollywood?”
He didn’t move, but the corners of his newspaper curled slowly down from the top. His brow furrowed as he contemplated my question, trying, I’m sure, to determine if he’d correctly heard me. He laid the paper forward onto the table. He slowly turned his head to me and blinked.
“How many rolls of string does it take to get to Hollywood?” I repeated.
He blinked and his head cocked slightly to one side as if to say, Did I hear him correctly?
“How many rolls of string…” he trailed off. “Do you mean you want to tie string together?”
“Uh huh…”
“And you have to reach to Hollywood?”
“Yes…”
“What in Heaven’s name for?”
I couldn’t tell him. He’d tell me my plan would never work. They always do that with the great inventors, the great thinkers of the world. Plus, there was the chance he’d see the brilliance of my plan and try to thwart my efforts, as would any law-abiding citizen.
“I just want to know…”
He shrugged and said, “Well, you have to figure it out.”
Darn parents, always trying to teach you something. Why can’t he just tell me how much?!
“Um… OK…” I struck a silent, pondering pose.
He helped me along. “How far do you think it is to Hollywood?”
I shrugged.
“Let’s figure it’s about 100 miles. How long is a spool of your kite string?”
I bolted away and ran down the hall. I returned in a flash and said, “200 yards!”
“OK. How many of those rolls would it take to go a mile?” He walked me through the calculations until we figured out that I’d need about 900 spools of string.
“Ok!” I said, happy with my number. I ran back to my spot in front of the TV and let my plan marinate inside my skull. For some reason I’ll never understand—I’m sure it was only that I didn’t have the cost of the string—I never brought to fruition my plan to obliterate those hated commercials.
My Diabolical Plan!
It was so pure and perfect in its simplicity that I know it would have worked without a hitch. My plan was to take a sharp knife from our kitchen drawer and tie it to one end of the string. I would go to the TV station and suspend the knife over the roll of film on which I was sure they had recorded all TV shows and commercials. I would run the string from Hollywood (‘Cause that’s where all TV originated, right?) to my house. Sitting in front of the TV, I would hold the end of the string and when one of the commercials I hated began to be broadcast, I would lift my end of the string, thereby lowering the knife on the other end. That knife would touch the center of the film and shred the commercial before it entered the projector and I wouldn’t have to watch it!
Some people are just born inventors.
Perhaps another reason I didn’t execute my plan was that I was devising other means of enhancing my life. One of my other needs was to have more candy available to me while I watched my beloved TV. I never seemed to have enough of my favorite candy and I always had to share with my five siblings. I had to develop some sort of queuing system that would feed me the candy, one piece after another. It had to be a trough or a tube and it must be situated in such a way that no one else could get my candy before I did. And, of course, it had to hold a lot of candy.
I again rushed to my father who sat, reading his paper. “Daddy, how many Snickers does it take to get to the Moon?
