TEXARKANA MAGAZINE T here is so much I don’t understand. I don’t understand what the Shuffle is. Or even if it is the Wamba Shuffle or the Wamby Shuffle. I don’t understand what play action is in football, and I have had it explained to me more than once. I don’t understand the game of bridge, despite having taken lessons three times. I could go on. Fortunately, none of this is critical to my happiness and wellbeing. There is, however, an area I don’t understand that negatively affects the quality of my life. I don’t understand how to watch television anymore. I’m not old enough to remember a world without television. My earliest memories include a TV, albeit one that only had two channels and sported rabbit ears on top. Though I have never been a TV addict, television has filled some important roles in my life
supposed to do it, but starting completely over works for me, so that is what I do. Follow me for more pro tips. It seems that any time we’re with a group of friends, the subject eventually turns to who is watching what on TV. We are generally listeners rather than contributors to these conversations, but they certainly provide helpful information about viewing possibilities. The trouble comes when we try to remember the good shows, whether they’re on Hulu, Netflix, Prime, or YouTube, and which of those apps we have. I noted the wisdom of money guru Joel Saul-Sehy in this magazine’s January issue. He said to rotate streaming services. “Watch Netflix for three months,” he advised, “then cancel and binge another.” It makes sense. But it requires a level of organization that just isn’t present in our household. We are, after all, the people
over the years. It was essential to nursing an infant, which is a time- consuming and repetitive endeavor that I hesitate to call boring, but I will. Watching the latest mini- series in the late seventies was critical to being able to carry on a conversation with co-workers in the office. I logged thousands of hours on the exercise bike watching taped episodes of Knots Landing and later TiVoed episodes of Rizzoli and Isles . There’s nothing quite like a rerun of Friends or The Big Bang Theory to keep you company during a quick lunch at home. I don’t really need TV, but I enjoy it. Okay, maybe I need it.
who unknowingly had two Netflix accounts for almost a year. We might go for three months without even watching anything other than the news, which brings up another thing I don’t understand—Where does the time go? I will say that Netflix was very gracious and gave us a refund for the months we paid them twice. I’m sure, however, they got a good chuckle out of the two old people for whom watching television is a gigantic challenge. Our TV is currently going through a fun phase of coming back on after we turn it off. Usually,
As media has evolved, I have noticed that my usual news sources haven’t been meeting my needs. I no longer listen to the car radio, which once kept me informed, and our newspaper subscriptions are all online, meaning the headlines don’t scream at me from the kitchen island. I have had to become intentional about gathering information about current events, so I’ve established the habit of sitting down each day at 5:00 to watch the news on television. It seems to fulfill my need to know. Lately, after three iterations of television service, I have found myself unable to watch the news at 5:00 because my husband Don isn’t home yet. He is the only one who can figure out how to work the Firestick-driven streaming service on our non-smart television. I can’t ever seem to determine which of the five remotes to use, nor remember to open the cabinet door through which a couple of them won’t work. If I can get the television turned on, I take what seems like hours to access anything. Do I click the “Live” button? Where will that hourglass icon take me? What if I have to use that keyboard where you scroll across to the letter you want, click it, and scroll to the next one? By the time I finish scrolling and clicking, the show I’m looking for is usually over. Seriously, in 2025, that keyboard seems a little bit low-tech to me. Once I get started watching, if I can get started, my next challenge is changing the channel. I don’t really know how you’re
it does it before we leave the room, but once it happened at 2 am. When voices coming from the next room woke us up, it took a minute to figure out it was just the television. Next time, we will know, but it probably won’t make it any less unsettling. The television problem is compounded by our recent acquisition of a second home in Dallas. We have one streaming service and all smart TVs there, so we should be good. Right? Sometimes, because our billing address is in Texarkana, we get Shreveport news. But that’s just on one television—the other shows us local Dallas news simultaneously. It’s the same streaming service and the same channel. We just look at each other and shake our heads. I find myself longing for the days of an antenna in the attic and nothing but a network other than the UHF channels that brought us the bullfights from Mexico City on Sunday afternoons. Not that I watched the bullfights. Have you ever seen a bullfight? I don’t recommend it. I hope you can’t relate to any of this, although I have talked to enough folks to know that many of you could have written it yourselves. Just to show I’m a good sport, I wish you all many hours of happily binging on whatever it is that floats your boat via whatever service works for you. And that’s sincere. Pretty much. Don’t worry about us. We’ll be over here watching Seinfeld reruns. Maybe.
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LIFE & STYLE
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