Free Range by Bill Whitehead for October 13, 2022

Rugrat job

You young’uns don’t realize how good you’ve got it!! Now get off my lawn!!

Fewer commercial {back} “breaks”.

…And don’t forget to adjust those rabbit ears before returning to the couch. Aluminum foil helps too.

Awww yes, black & white TV. I remember our first color TV. It was exciting to finally watch Saturday morning cartoons in color. (Afterwards it was outside playing all day until dark. Mom never knew or worried where we were)

Being my father’s remote is why I have poor eyesight. It was too much trouble to schlep back and forth between the couch and the TV so I’d sit really close to the TV.

Now we binge watch things and never change.

From the couch, all TVs seem remote.

Before remotes, it was usually a matter of turning a dial to change the channel rather then clicking a button.

it was brutal

no kids??

Channel surfing involved going all the way around the 13-number dial, even though we only got three stations.

or when the batteries in the remote die. Ever try to find the buttons on a flat screen TV?

Nah! That was what us kids were for. I distinctly remember hearing, “What do you think I got you for?”

oh, you poor baby… that’s why mom and dad had us kids for… as dad would put it. :}

This is why networks had programming blocks. People would watch anything rather than getting up to change the channel!

We could get 8 channels. We had a rotater which had to be turned to pick up Nashville or Chattanooga. Then we could get ABC, CBS, NBC and PBS on each of them. Still no remote. Whew.

Society has become so lazy with all the convenient amenities

I grew up when TV was invented and only few people had a 5" screen tube TV!

As an old person, I can confirm his agony…

Panel 2..Gunsmoke, panel 3..The Rookies.

Don’t lose the remote.

And it was uphill both ways!

That’s what us kids were for…..

That’s why people had children!

As several people have mentioned, a younger version of myself was the remote for my father!

That’s why we had kids.

I like the black & white screen. Is that ‘Highway Patrol’?

Changing the channel was the easy part. After that, you had to adjust the aluminum foil on the antenna and then spin the fine tuner several times to get the picture.

Sadly this is probably exactly how the newer generation thinks about a lot of things.

My dad used us kids as the remote.

Worse, when the best reception was when you held on to one of the ‘rabbit ears’. (The foil wasn’t good enough.) Even then it could be tough to watch from the side of the curved black and white screen.

We could watch anything we wanted to watch….as long as it was what Dad wanted to watch.

It was worse with a broken leg. I started using a pool cue as a remote.

God yes do I remember those days! Now all we have is garbage on most channels!

Even using Avocado GEEEN as the made color of the wall and tv! Fitting!