media: tv

I can't decide what category this should go in. When I was small, I had bizarre fever dreams. Mostly I knew they were dreams, such as the one I had where Abraham Lincoln came into my bedroom (how tall!), removed his hat politely, and sat down on the edge of my bed, to give me silent moral support. But I also had what was probably more of an hallucination. When I had a very high fever I used to turn the TV to a non-channel (oh yes! We had those in the 70's!!), where there was nothing but static. Because, in the "snow," I saw chickens. They were just running around, eating corn, pecking in the dirt, etc., and I found this comforting. I called it the "chicken channel," and my mom humored me in this, although it must have driven her insane, because for some reason I also insisted on having the sound turned up.

I've never actually had Sky TV and the first time I saw it was at my then boyfriend's house (now my fiance), only about 5 years ago so I was early 20s. Anyway I thought when the menu comes up and you can see what's on later on that day, that you could just go to that programme and watch it, even if it's not on til later that day. What an idiot!

Amazingly he's still marrying me even though I'm clearly totally stupid.

I use to always believe that whenever you saw two people in a movie or on TV kissing, in a sex scene, etc., they had to be related. It would have been wrong if they weren't since then they would have been strangers.

When I was little, I saw a music video ("If this is it" by Huey Lewis and the News) in which members of the band had been buried up to their chins in sand and were singing. It scared the living daylights out of me because I seriously thought I was seeing severed heads singing on the beach!

My sister and I used to believe that Lucille Ball was our grandmother because they looked a lot alike. We thought that somehow being a "redhead" meant having brown hair because our grandma's hair was brown and they were always talking about how Lucy was a redhead on I Love Lucy (which of course was in black and white.) We also thought a local store owner was Hulk Hogan from the WWF and a local beautician was Jenny Craig.

I used to think it if I paused the TV on one channel, every other person who was watching that channel would get their TV paused too. I always wondered why no one else paused my TV

I used to think Timmy Mallet was Tony Robinson.

I remember once when my grandmother--a dear old soul, but never the sharpest tool in the shed--was watching a Western with my family, and she asked, "How did they film that? Did they have movie cameras back then?"

None of us made a sound, but the silent laughter was deafening.

She also thought, when somebody got killed in a movie, then they really were dead.

She could never get the concept of that show, "Police Squad" either--you remember, the show that was like "Airplane," but it made fun of cop shows. There would be a cop (Leslie Nielsen) and a bad guy firing at each other, and the camera would pull back to reveal that they were, like, two feet apart. No matter how many times we explained to grandma that the show was a spoof, and was supposed to be stupid, she'd still say, "Well, that's just silly. How can they miss! Even I could hit somebody that close!"

I have a zillion stories about her like that. TV was a lot more fun when she was around.

When the drama and soaps production teams wanted to have either snow, rain or strong winds, I always thought that they had to wait for the weather to arrive. I thought that this was the case until I went on a back stage tour at Disney MGM Studios.

When I was four or five years old, I remember watching an afternoon movie on channel 5. There was an interuption in the show and suddenly an announcer's voice boomed: "we are experiencing technical difficulties, please stand by." My brother and I immediately stood to the either side of the tv until the show returned.

When I was little like 4, 5, or 6 I thought that you could stick the tape in the VCR and record something that you missed on TV. So I tried doing that once when I missed my episode of Arthur. So now in the middle of a Charlie Brown Christmas on video tape is Bill Nye the Science Guy talking about desert animals.

I used to believe 'To Be Announced' was a real TV show. I'd read it in the TV guide, flip to the channel and wonder why they never did show it. I believed it until I was 17 or 18, when I asked my mom about it.

When I was little, my friend and I couldn't imagine what was on TV after midnight. We tried to figure out what the programs would be like, or if there was only static. We had countless sleepovers to try and figure this out, but we would always fall asleep too early and wake up disappointed. I am not sure when we finally figured out that it was just regular programming...

I used to believe that television was a portal to another location/world. I believed that if I broke the glass on the TV, I could actually jump into whatever was on television and that's where I'd be. I think it came from watching the Alice in Wonderland TV Special from the 80's. She could look through the mirror and there would be that whole other world. Good thing I never found a world good enough that justified breaking the TV!

I used to think that the laugh tracks you hear during tv shows were actual people who were watching the same show at home, and you could hear them laughing through the speakers, and they could hear me. So every once in a while I got annoyed at the laughing and yelled "SHUT UP" into the speakers.

When there was a problem with a TV station, the announcer would as everyone to please stand by... my brother and I would promptly get up and stand by the television set.