Us: Oh...haha...no, we don't have a TV.
Friend: Did you watch the debates last night?
Us: Ugh. Like, we wanted to be informed, but we don't have a TV, sooooooo.
Person: Did you see that thing on TV?
Us: No! We missed it because we don't have a TV. Damn...it.
We love to tell people that we don't have a television because it makes us feel cool and better than they are, but no one really cares because that's like more of a 90s, early 2000s thing.
When I was a kid and learned that someone didn't have a TV, I was more shocked than if they'd told me they didn't have a toilet. But how on Earth do you get through the non-day that is Tuesday if you don't know that Full House is waiting for you at the end of it? And how do you know a thing about New York if you don't watch Seinfeld?
These people were cool. They were bad asses. And they were poor.
But in the years I haven't owned a television, television has almost completely taken over my life, and it's so uncool.
The moment I realized that I couldn't access Netflix in Barcelona happened a nanosecond before I was frantically searching "full episodes" on Youtube. I tried to convince myself that I could live off of reruns of Ellen (the sitcom, not the talk show) for two years.
I'll just learn Spanish, read more and write a book about all the crazy experiences I'll have while I'm not watching television is what I thought. Then my roommate taught me how to pirate shit, so I didn't do any of those things, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Oh the plethora! Oh the cornucopia! Fuck you HBO!
Why doesn't everyone do this? I wondered probably out loud. Not paying people for their work is great as we've seen so many times throughout history. How could this fail?
Two and a half years later, I moved back to the U.S. with a man who comes from an entire country of couldn't-give-a-fuck-lessers, and we eagerly awaited the new season of a show I'm not going to name for legal reasons and because I'm embarrassed to admit that I watch it.
When the blessed day finally came, we downloaded the hell out of every episode and made it through to the finale. I arrived at work the next day sad that it was over but happy to have been a part of it.
Sitting at the top of my over 2,000 unread messages was a cease and desist email from two companies that would make you shit your pants.
So after I shit my pants, I called Jaime. At that time, he wasn't able to work, and my call roused him from his sweet dreams. He was perturbed and told me I was overreacting. Why would a Fortune 500 (whatever that means) company waste its time with two "beggars" like us?
I'm easily convinced to do nothing, so I was prepared to let it go.
Three minutes later, Jaime called.
"Ummm, hey, babe. So, yeah. I don't think we should do that anymore. Okay?," said the man who'd just shat his pants.
Jaime once excitedly told me there was a pirate convention in town,
and my equally excited thought bubble was this:
...but that's not what he meant apparently.
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