When our children were very young we lived in a parsonage owned by the church for which we worked. It was a lovely house and probably larger and nicer than we could have afforded at the time. We had recently graduated from seminary and didn’t have savings for a down payment. The congregation that owned the house was a good steward of their property and had taken good care of it. It had new carpet and fresh paint when we moved in. There was a new shower in the basement. They installed an opener on the garage door. While we lived in the house, the roof was damaged by hail and was replaced. They also decided to replace the exterior siding on the home. When they had the siding off of the house they decided to wire the home for television cable, installing cable outlets in several rooms.

We had not owned a television up to that a point in our lives and it was interesting because members of the church thought that it was strange that we didn’t have a set. Some of the members donated a set to be in the parsonage, and we decided to pay the monthly fee to hook up to cable. In the months after our daughter came to live with us I was often up in the middle of the night and sometimes, when she was slow to return to sleep, I would turn on the television in the middle of the night and watch a bit. Mostly what I watched were reruns of the show M*A*S*H. The half hour format seemed to be just right for my mood at the time and the show came on at a time when our daughter was often having trouble settling and I would change her diaper, give her a bottle, and rock her while I watched the program.

A few years later we moved to Idaho where we purchased a home that came with a television antenna installed in the garage. It would pick up three local stations, including the local public broadcasting station. That was enough television for us and we let our children watch Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. By that time our daughter was sleeping more at night and I gave up the routine of watching television in the middle of the night. For a while we would rent a VCR and movies from a local outlet from time to time to watch movies. Later we purchased a new television set and a VCR one Christmas and we got into the habit of watching movies as a family from time to time. Our children collected a few favorite movies on VCR tapes and we watched some several times.

As the years went by and our children grew up, I watched television less and less. At some point when our television wore out I didn’t get around to replacing it. There were so many other things that I enjoyed with my spare time. I’ve always enjoyed reading. It seemed like when I had some time, I had plenty of things to do.

Along the way we also got out of the habit of watching movies at the theatre except on rare occasions. I’m not sure why. We’ve been well entertained by some very good movies and we enjoy it when we do go to a movie. It is just something that we don’t seem to think of doing very often.

I joke with my friends that I am “culturally deprived” because I just don’t keep up with the popular movies. When they are discussing various films, I have to admit that I haven’t watched them. In recent years the only movies I have watched in theaters are children’s movies that one of our grandchildren wanted to see, and I haven’t seen very many of them. I think that I only watched one movie in the past year: Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie.

That movie didn’t receive a nomination for best picture from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I looked up the list of the nominees online and I haven’t seen any of them. I vaguely know the basic stories of a few of them: Oppenheimer, Barbie, and Maestro, but most aren’t the least bit familiar to me. Suffice it to say that I’m not likely to pay much attention to which film wins the various awards at tomorrow’s ceremony. Since we don’t currently own a television, I’m not likely to watch the awards ceremony anyway.

I do watch a bit of television. At least I watch YouTube videos on my computer. And we can stream movies on our computer. I have a large monitor that is as big as the largest television we have ever owned and we have streamed and watched movies on the monitor. But I remain fairly disconnected from what is a major entertainment for a lot of our friends.

On the other hand, like other topics about which I don’t have expertise, I do occasionally pay a bit of attention so that I can at least engage in conversation with friends about topics that interest them. I’m not a big sports fan, either, but I usually pay enough attention to know which teams are playing in the Super Bowl, the World Series, and other major sports events.

Tomorrow’s Oscar awards ceremony is a big enough part of our culture that there have been a lot of articles about it in the news and I’ve read a couple of them. I also have listened to discussions of movies on the radio. My usual radio stations are US public broadcasting and Canadian Broadcast radio and both of those stations have had commentators on the oscars in recent days. I heard one discussion with a couple of Canadian movie critics who had binge watched all ten of the Oscar nominations for best picture in recent weeks. One of those people had re-watched a couple of them several times.

I don’t think I’ve gained enough from listening to the discussion to intelligently discuss the movies. I certainly wouldn’t make a good entertainment reporter for a news outlet. I might add another year like last year to my life: a year in which I didn’t see any of the films nominated for best picture. I’m not ruling anything out, but somehow I don’t feel any attraction to taking a look at the Barbie movie anytime soon.