Wednesday, July 13, 2005

The Welcome Stranger

A few months before I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around to welcome me into the world a few months later. As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me the word of God, and Dad taught me to obey it. But the stranger? He was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies. If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind. Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to her room an read her books. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.) Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our long-time visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad was a teetotaler who didn't permit alcohol in the home, not even for cooking. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing. I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... and NEVER asked to leave. More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you were to walk into my parent's den today you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures. His name?.................... We just call him TV.


Author unknown. I received this in email from an old friend.

9 comments:

Heather said...

Wow! I didn't see that ending coming. Very poignant.

xtessa said...

LOL!!! you had me going there! i was imagining the stranger to be these old guy in a rocking chair still mouthing off!!!

good one!

Jamie Dawn said...

Caught me by surprise. Very clever post.

Anonymous said...

Oooooh, I'm so disappointed. Funny? Yes. Clever too and a fun surprise. But I so much wanted him to be real.

Anonymous said...

Okay, this stranger came to our house, too. This says much about our times, doesn;t it?

Michele said...

We had the same stranger when I was growing up...however, he was only allowed to visit with me for two hours a week.

Do you feel sorry for me? No, I didn't think so.

Thank you for sharing this post Judy.

kenju said...

To Michele and all of you who commented:

No, I do not feel sorry for anyone who was allowed to watch only 2 hrs. a day of TV! They are lucky, even if they don't/didn't realize it.

I must say that Blogger has certainly led me away from TV in the last 6 months. I usually use TV as background noise to whatever else I am doing (puzzles, reading, conversing, etc.) but I have lost all interest in it since I started this blog; I don't even watch news anymore. Is that a bad thing or a good thing?

Dave Morris said...

I, too, have lost some interest in television since I started blogging.

Thanks for sharing that, it had a great ending!

Arethusa said...

Hey, maybe that TV needed some Classical Arts Showcase to liven him up a bit, he sounds rather one-dimensional!