TV Rots Your Brain, Read a Newspaper Instead

"Have you ever thought about DirecTV?" said the message. My wife had just IMed me while I was at work.

"Uhh, no, no I haven't," I replied, getting defensive. "And so what if I have? There's nothing wrong with that. Dr. Phil says fantasies are important to having a healthy relationship. I mean, sure I walk through Best Buy with sunglasses on, but that's because it's so dang bright in there."

"What are you talking about?" she wrote back.

"All right, all right. Sometimes I think about DirecTV when I'm watching our other TV. But that's perfectly normal, isn't it?" I was rolling now. "I once had a TV accuse me of looking at other TVs, but I said 'hey, just because I bought a TV from the electronics store, doesn't mean I can't look at the ads once in a while.'"

"You're weird," my wife messaged back.

Fair enough. But I was also stunned. Years ago, my wife would have never considered DirecTV. Years before that, my mom would never have let me watch that much TV.

Even 32 years later, I'm still embarrassed to admit that my mom limited my TV watching when I was a kid. I was allowed one hour on weekdays, two hours on Saturday, and three on Sunday, so I could watch all the religious programming.

(See, if you knew me when I was a kid, that would be hilarious.)

To read the rest of this column, visit my Laughing Stalk blog.