By Randy Krzmarzick
I don’t watch much TV. My wife says I have the attention span of a gnat. That might be one reason. Another might be there are too many choices.
I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid when we only got Channel 12. It was in black and white. I was a teenager before I found out New York City had colors.
Friends watched early in COVID and recommended it. I like soccer a little, so we talked about watching. Finally, this winter Pam convinced me to settle on the couch with my gnat’s attention span to watch two episodes a night. To me, that counted as binge watching. Pam pointed out that real binge watching means staying up past 10 p.m.
This week, the third season of “Ted Lasso” was “dropped.” I figured we’d go back to our two-episodes-a-night routine with snacks and a blanket. Come to find out that one episode a week will be released on Apple TV till all twelve are loosed on the world.
What?!
I have to wait a week?
I flashed to 1967 and my 11-year-old self, having to wait a week for the next Green Acres.
Don’t they know this is 2023?
Of course, that’s the way it worked since the beginning of television in the Fifties. Gunsmoke and The Honeymooners gave you an hour. I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver gave you a half hour. Then you waited a week till the next chapter.
Every story wrapped up in thirty or sixty minutes. Except for those that ended with the dreaded, “To be continued.” That meant you had to wait seven excruciating days to know if Lassie would get help in time to save Timmy, who was trapped in a well or being chased by a bear. Timmy was always in some kind of trouble.
So, we’ll watch “Ted Lasso” and then wait a week. Like the old days. Only I’m not sure I’m as good at waiting as I used to be.
I thought about things I used to wait for. I can remember exact times the markets and weather reports were on KNUJ and WCCO radio. I’d sidle up to the kitchen or truck radio, depending if I was in or out. Now those are instantly available to me on my phone any time. I have six weather apps, so I can obsess about the forecast if I’m trying to plant corn. I tell people I scroll around till I find a forecast I like.
How are the Twins doing? Phone. What about that bill at the legislature? Phone.
What time is that funeral? Phone.
For some of these, you used to have to wait till the evening news. For some, it was tomorrow’s newspaper. It’s like we all had a degree in Advanced Waiting back then.
Similarly, If I want to talk to someone now, I take that device out of my pocket and dial them up. Well, more like tap them up. No more going into the house to call and hoping the person I was calling was in their house, which was unlikely in the middle of the day.
Waiting means patience. It is often said that “Patience is a virtue.” That implies some choice in the matter. In all these examples, we didn’t have a choice. Waiting was built into life. Kind of like eating and sleeping.
Waiting isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While waiting, one can doodle. Or think. Or even pray. Each of those can be a valuable use of time. Doodling has led to engineering breakthroughs, although I mostly do daisies and bunnies.
Earlier this winter, I got myself to an airport exactly two hours before my flight, as we are instructed. Soon, I found out my flight was delayed three hours, then four, then five. It was because of weather. I’m all in favor of caution if I’m going to be 30,000 feet in the air, so I was accepting of my fate.
Outside of shuffling between gates as the airport kept adjusting, I didn’t have much to do for seven hours. It was a surprise quiz in the class of waiting. I walked around, nibbled a bit, read some, and visited with fellow travelers. I suppose I was practicing patience; it wasn’t like impatience would have helped. I thought. I prayed. I didn’t doodle.
Waiting changes as you move through the decades. When we are young, we can’t wait to drive. Then we can’t wait to graduate. Then we can’t wait to get married and have kids. Looking back now, it feels like I raced through those quickly, anxious for the next, barely taking time to enjoy each as it came. Now at 67, I don’t have things “I can’t wait” to do. I don’t mind a little waiting now, slow it all down.
One type of waiting is for the birth of a child. That’s a predictable nine months. Of course, there’s a giant difference between waiting as a father vs. waiting as a mother. Any mother reading this is nodding her head vigorously. That’s the same nine months it used to be. But even there, there’s been a change from The World That I Grew Up In. Now we most often know the gender of the anticipated child. So waiting has changed even there.
If you are a gardener or a farmer, you know the sensation that kicks in about now, when you begin waiting for planting. Golfers and baseball players begin feeling an itch, too. Looking out at giant hills of snow, it appears we’re all going to be waiting a while.
Speaking of waiting, we are in the season of Lent. The church calendar gives us two seasons devoted to waiting: Lent and Advent. We are to do more than sit around and doodle. We’re to take special time to ready our souls for the Lord in the manger and the empty tomb. That is supposed to be every day, but seasons give us focus.
Waiting as part of life has always been. In Psalms, we are told, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” And later, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.”
See. None of this is new. I guess I can wait for Ted Lasso.