BW photo of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball in a skiing scene from I LOVE LUCY

If You’re as Chronologically “Mature” as I am…

… then you remember back when there was no way to record a TV show and watch it later?  You had to  sat and watched Ozzie and Harriet or I Love Lucy as it was broadcast, or you just didn’t get to see it–unless the show was successful enough to have at least 100 episodes in the can, so it could be picked up by one of the local independent stations and re-broadcast as re-runs.  

No home video tape machines. No video tapes to rent from Blockbuster (remember Blockbuster?) We all watched together, at the same time, in our time zone.

The world stopped moving on the three Sunday nights in February of 1964 when The Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan Show.  By this time my family had a color TV and I risked radiation poisoning as I sat two feet from the screen and watched my faves perform twice per show.

Of course, my viewing habits changed with the times, from broadcast to cable, to video, to DVR, then DVD, then Blu-ray and now, Amazon Prime Video, Acorn, Britbox, etc.  

Which brings me to binging.  I am a binger (is that a word?)  Instead of music, I often play the entire Downton Abbey series while I write, like a soundtrack in the background.  If it’s British and has played on PBS, I am or have binged it: Death in Paradise, every episode of Poirot, Marple and Midsomer Murders, Shakespeare and Hathaway, Agatha Raisin, Wycliff, Upstairs/Downstairs, Upstart Crow, Upstart Crow, Upstart Crow…

Turns out that bingeing, binging, bingering–whatever–has also been a boon to our family during the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown.

I only hope I can stop myself once we’re free to leave the house again.