Longest you have gone without TV

Simple question: what is the longest you have gone without watching
television? Personally, it would have to be those weeks at summer camp

John Gilmer...

Three of the four years I was an undergrad student at college I didn't have
ready access to TV. Except for trips home at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and
Easter it was 9 months without.

PorchMonkey4Life...

Liar! You know that you could always go down to the Student Union.

That's what I did

John Gilmer...

I could have done that my Freshman year when I lived in the dorm (actually,
it wasn't the "union" but a larger dorm nearby) but I just didn't bother.
In high school I was somewhat of a "loner" and, likely, saturated myself
with TV. MAYBE I saw one TV movie (it was the DI with Jack Webb). At
that time the school has color TV but my parents didn't. Even with that I
just didn't watch TV. It's one thing to turn on the set in your living or
bed room. It's quite another thing to go to another building just to
watch. It has to be something special. I always knew that I COULD watch
and that's one reason I didn't bother.

It's well known that bars were the first places to get TV back when it was
still "new." When color came out the bars were among the first purchasers.
When the first moon landing occurred, I didn't know that the shots were only
in B&W and we went to a bar to watch it hoping to see it in color. The
other customers just didn't seem to care about the moon landing and we just
as well should have watched at home.

I did watch some TV at the "union" when I was married grad student and my
wife had an evening class. I remember well watching Star Trek on a big
screen COLOR TV with a bunch of other students. On one of the episodes,
Cpt. Kirk kissed some woman and the entire group (some 10-15 individuals)
cheered him on!

In my military training I spent 6 weeks w/o TV. On active duty I was 6
months w/o.

The interesting thing is that each time when I finally got TV I would watch
just about anything!

I'm old enough to remember when most families didn't have TV. After a dry
spell just seeing anything is like us folks in the early 50s who would watch
whatever the ONLY station decided to put on.

Now with a minimum choice of 10 stations (no cable) I often find there is
nothing worth watching and just turn to a book.

when I was but a wee lad. These days, I get impatient when the power

pkj0891...

Yeah, me, too. That would've been the summer going into 6th grade.
Although there are days when I could've chosen not to turn on the TV
as background noise.

These days, I get impatient when the power

goes out for an hour and I am forced to watch DVDs on my laptop as its
battery slowly dies.

record hunter...

Ages 18-37.

Lobster Man...

Get a life....

Personally, I don't remember specific time frames. I know I've done
without TV for at least several months multiple times in my life. And
even then, it was often just background noise, not active watching.

David...

Wow, you're super.

Lobster Man...

That's right. Super Lobster Man. My sole
superpower is to be able to have the TV on and not pay attention to it.
Oh, and to be able to awake from any sleep and instantly know what time
it is without looking at a clock. Think I'm ready for the Justice League?

I know a guy that claims his "super power" is to instantly recognize
anyone's voice on the phone. You call him and start talking "Hello, this
is..." and he interrupts and says "Bob, how are you." So far, with me at
least, he's always been right. But considering I always call him from
one number, I have to guess he's just memorized my phone number and
knows it's me from the call ID.

I keep meaning to try a phony accent, but haven't tried yet.

record hunter...

Ages 18-37.

Rhino...

I stopped watching TV entirely for two years and 8 months when I first
started working full time and it was one of the best things I ever did.

I'd just moved to a new city and was living alone. I didn't own a TV andI
had been watching way too much TV in the previous years so I decided to
concentrate on other things to pass the time. Finally, after nearly three
years without watching TV, I found that I was really missing watching the
news and knowing what was happening in the world so I bought a 12" black and
white TV so that I could watch news but not get too hooked on TV. Then, that
Christmas, my mother bought be a 26" colour TV.

As it turned out, that long time away from TV had cured me of the
willingness to watch hours of bad TV, just for something to do. I found that
I was far more discriminating about what I'd watch and would simply turn it
off and do something else if there was nothing good on. I'm still that way
now. I only watch when something good is on; the rest of the time I do other
things.

Perhaps you need to try something like this? It sounds to me like you are
addicted to TV -:)

pkj0891...

I bought a Sony Watchman years ago, and it still works fine. Whenever
we lose power, I whip out the Watchman. I was actually going to buy a
new one, figuring that now they'd have ones with bigger screens, but
Sony no longer makes them.

I can't watch TV and movies on my computer. We still have (as an
alternate) dialup AOL, so if I want to go online when Comcast is down,
I just hook up via the phone line. I've never run out of battery
power before everything came back on (except for this July, when we
lost power for two days and ended up in a hotel).

Anim8rFSK...

Okay, I'm trying right now

timing myself

28

29

30

3 . . . . 1

AAGH!

Okay, 32 seconds.

A new personal best!

Hudsongrl...

sounds like you need a 12-step program ;-)