Stitches

I was raised in a household serviced by basic, commercial broadcast television. It was viewed on an obese, rabbit-eared TV set that loafed in our living room like a curmudgeonly squatter, providing the Mesozoic-era quirk of being made to get up and actually approach the device every time you wished to surf the four channels you had access to. This wasn’t as big a problem as you might think, given that three of them tended not to come in.

At some point we upgraded to basic cable, a watershed moment for our fledging family. Still, without a decent package there were few tangible upgrades but for the remote control and the porn station. While we didn’t actually get the porn, it wasn’t entirely blocked, either; you’d get a scrambled picture of distorted, moving body parts and full erotic audio replete with moans, groans, and pleasure-stricken affirmations that far outdistanced anything on Nickelodeon.

When my father cashed in seven sleepless years of medical school and residency for full time work as an emergency room physician, the rest of his family was finally able to cash in on proper television. Our home no longer plied with standard cable but by the crème de la crème package, including upwards of, at last count, infinity movie channels, one was afforded the great edifying delight of sneaking downstairs once one’s parents were safely in bed and discovering the naughty proceedings of cathouses and the raunchy thrills of unscrambled soft-core porn. We were even furnished with primo add-ons, like Sunday TicketÔ, where you could sponge up every NFL game, 17 weeks a season.

Years later, after I had inadvertently started a family of my own, I would discover the cycle to have reset itself; my last two football seasons after becoming a dad, I am sorry to report, were reduced to channels 4 and 25 broadcasted games only – not even ESPN. Our cable threshold had been pretty much capped at network programming. Last time I checked, having NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox wasn’t called cable, it was called free television. Pardon my French, but what kind of horseshit is that? Incidentally, do we hate the French so much that we associate their entire language with coarseness and vulgarity? But I digress.

That my television viewing became cheapened in fatherhood was a fact that needled me even more during the nine A.M. to four P.M. window. The only thing worse than the mindless excrement that passed for daytime television, in my mind, was the hoard of glazed intellects drinking it in, their afternoons saturated with this claptrap.

Did this viewing demographic honestly have nothing better to do than to sit in their shoddy living rooms every day reviewing the events of Herbert v. Arnold, due to the latter having allegedly shot the plaintiff’s dog in the ass after a dispute over some repair work? Did they really believe Arnold’s tapestry of poorly sewn together, obviously fabricated lies? For one thing, his timeline was a farce. Had he truly feared for his life, would he have gone back to the car to retrieve his gun? Doubtful; he’d have left and kept going, wouldn’t he have? Secondly, if we were to believe that his was a BB gun, why would Arnold have been charged with possession of a firearm by the local police? What, he didn’t mention to them that it was only a BB gun? They couldn’t tell the difference? His story was simply implausible.

Sadly, I know the facts of this case because I found myself increasingly glued to the very poppycock I long disparaged. There’s only so much you can do with a teething 10-month-old baby during Boston’s blustery winter months in a small apartment, and I consequently noticed that my Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday early afternoons were preceded and followed by the erudite events of Judge Alex and his brethren.

(As a brief aside: during this time period, if you were to ask Emma, “Where’s the fan?” she would look upward, smiling, and announce, “Ca!”

She did so one day and I thought to myself, You know, about a year and a half ago you were one of my sperm. Now you’re this little girl who smiles at fans and calls them ‘cas’ and squeals with laughter while I tickle you and who theatrically plops your head on top of your arms when I say “Emma no.”

This is outrageous.)

During one lackluster Thursday after the twentieth consecutive read of a book involving a ridiculous turkey who can’t seems to figure out that his pants don’t belong on his face, we flipped on Judge Alex (he was our favorite), Emma playing by my feet while I lounged on the couch, getting fatter. Presently she turned and raised her hands, the universally accepted sign in Baby-speak meaning “Uppy.” So I scooped her up and plopped her beside me, upside-down. After wrangling to right herself, Miss Fits proceeded to snuggle into the crook of my arm, tilting her head back to offer a happy smile, then rested her little noggin on my chest while the courtroom excitement unfolded. After a few minutes she glanced at me again and, apparently deciding that I was lacking something, removed her treasured binky from her mouth and plunged it into mine.

And it occurred to me then that I could live out the rest of my life never finding a better job, never publishing a word – not even as a two-bit hack mystery writer – never moving in to a spacious Brownstone on Beacon Street or summering anywhere, never driving a $40,000 sports car, never traveling the world or getting back to my fighting weight or owning a plasma television or even signing up for a better cable package, and that would all be fine – quite fine – as long as there was this.

If my past has taught me one lesson, it’s that life isn’t about having the most of everything but making the most of everything. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy those commodities, you understand, but the inherent charm in having what you need – including being able to watch trashy TV with your occasionally mischievous daughter who is willing to share with you her binky (meaning: she loves you like crazy) and having a wife who puts up with you – is what counts. The integral stitches of that elusive happy life.

The rest is gravy.