sleeping with the television on

Ever since I was a little kid, I have had a wonderful relationship with television. I guess that's why I write about it so much. I love television. I love watching television. I love talking about television. I love reading about television. My parents weren't the type of parents who referred to television as "the boob tube." They never accused television of poisoning my young and impressionable mind. They never restricted my television watching. Hell, they watched nearly as much television as I did. 

I had some friends growing up whose parents insisted that a certain amount of educational programming be watched to counteract the mindless crap that dementated the children's viewing choice. I remember skipping right over the public television affiliate on my way to the channels that showed cartoons or game shows or silly sitcom. In junior high, I discovered Monty Python's Flying Circus which was the only time my family's television ever stopped on PBS for more that just a few seconds. Yes sir, my television watching consisted of some of the dumbest, lamest, mindless selections ever to delight a child's short attention span.

I was lucky enough to marry someone who shares my love of television. We both watched a lot of the same shows when we were younger. Of course, there were shows that she watched and shows that I watched. Mrs. Pincus watched Here Come The Brides featuring dreamy Bobby Sherman and Emergency! featuring dreamy Randolph Mantooth. I watched Lancelot Link: Secret Chimp on Saturday mornings, a spy spoof with an all-monkey cast. Ten-year old Mrs. P would never — never! — waste her precious time watching even a minute of monkeys in trench coats. Nevertheless, we both loved shows like The Brady Bunch, Room 222 and That Girl. Years of watching The Love Boat gave us a skewed view of what taking a cruise would be like, something we wouldn't experience until years later. Mrs. P gained a vast knowledge of medical lingo from watching Medical Center and Marcus Welby (and of course, Chad Everett's and James Brolin's good looks didn't hurt). I, on the other hand, acquired no viable life skills from Yogi Bear. Well, maybe stealing pic-a-nic baskets.

I vaguely recall some of the shows my parents watched. My dad loved the gritty, street-smart adventures of  Kojak. My mom leaned towards the more sophisticated tales presented on Columbo. Both of my parents — my liberal, free-thinking mom and my narrow-minded bigoted dad — watched and enjoyed All in the Family. My mom got the joke and my dad thought he was watching a documentary.

I'm not sure when exactly it started, but, I will walk into a room in my house and  — if there's a television in it — I turn the television on before I turn a light on. As a matter of fact, I cannot go to sleep unless the television is on. That's right. When Mrs. P and I decide to call it a night (which, by the way, gets earlier and earlier as the years go on), we fluff up the pillows, pull up the blankets and turn on the television. Not necessarily in that order. Actually, the television goes on first. Then the pillow and blanket prep. Then, the light goes out and our bedroom is bathed in the warm, comforting glow of my old pal television. I slowly (or quickly) slip into dreamland, lulled there by the calming tones of James Arness wielding his frontier justice on a 60-year old episode of Gunsmoke followed by Dale Robertson keeping things on the up-and-up on an even older installment of Tales of Wells Fargo (later knows as Tales of Xfinity Mobile ....that's a joke that only Philadelphians will get). While I am approaching the REM portion of my nighttime slumber, light-sleeper Mrs. Pincus switches channels to Storage Wars or something more recent, before switching back to an old Western. She just likes to know her options. Changing channels doesn't bother me. The TV going off — that's a problem!

Even though I am asleep, I know when the television goes off. Although my eyes are closed and I am deep into the third or fourth stage of shut-eye, I can sense when the room is immersed in total blackness... and that awakens me immediately. I don't know why. I don't know how. It just does.

The good folks at Xfinity, our cable provider (where — apparently — the WIFI is booming), regularly — and remotely — resets our cable box. Two or three times a week, at around two or three o'clock in the morning, Xfinity flashes a warning on our television screen informing my sound-asleep wife and me that our cable box needs a little routine maintenance. Then... BOOM... the TV goes off for a good long time. I don't know how long, but it's long. Long enough to wake me up. Through my thin eyelids, I suddenly realize that the TV is off. I shoot up in bed and fumble for my glasses so I can get a clear view of  this my TV screen...

It stays there for a while. Mocking me, keeping me awake, Withholding my nighttime viewing (or listening) schedule and holding me hostage. Those three little dots flicker. And flicker. And flicker. Well, now I'm really awake. I check my phone lying by my bedside for the time. I check it again. I try to go back to sleep. I close my eyes, but I know that the room is still dark. I know that glow is just the screen with the flickering dots. I open my eyes and turn my head only to see those dots. My frustration increases.

Then, suddenly, my TV screen is ablaze with horses and cowboys and a black & white episode of Laramie. 

Finally, I can get some sleep.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

fly on little wing

It was the middle of the night. Our bedroom was dark and still. My wife lay beside me, her breathing restful and rhythmic. Dim shadows from the open window played across the walls and ceiling, making abstract shapes that morphed with each gust of wind that rustled the curtains.

Then..... something. Something was there.

At first, I thought, without my glasses, my astigmatic eyes were forcing me to see something that wasn't there. I sat up. Something whizzed past my head in the dark. Then, it whizzed past in the other direction and lit on the curtain rod above the front window.

My wife stirred. "What?, " she whispered, still mostly asleep.

"I-I think there's something in...." 

I was interrupted by the horrific shriek issuing from my wife's throat. She retreated to the woolen sanctuary that the bed covers became. The shrieks continued, although they were now muffled under several layers of quilts.

There was a bat in our room.

I bounded from the bed, and crept along its perimeter, keeping my head low. The nocturnal creature flew in wild circles around the ceiling. It flew out into the hallway and the adjacent den. Using uncharacteristically clear thinking, I closed and secured the door to each room leading from the hallway - starting with the door to our young son's room. I managed to confine the flying vermin to the den and I closed that door, too. Then, I darted down to the basement and grabbed the first thing I saw that I could wield as a weapon. I grabbed a broom. Two at a time, I ascended the stairs again and slowly, cautiously, opened the den door and slunk in. Immediately, the beast swooped towards me. I swung my broom. The bat dove again. Again, I swung in the manner of a delinquent hockey player just asking for a "high sticking" penalty. I continued my parry with the airborne rat until my household armament finally connected. My winged adversary fell to the floor of the den. I instantly observed that this critter I had perceived as being roughly the size of an Airbus A320 was, in reality, a little bigger than a Brillo pad.

Using my arsenal for its intended purpose, I swept the offending creature into an old shoebox. I hopped down the stairs, traversed the darkened living room, opened the front door and deposited the box into a trashcan waiting out on the porch. I locked up the house, stopped in the kitchen for a drink of water and to wash my hands, then headed back up to sleep.

I could see the silhouette of my wife, still quivering under the covers. I explained to her that I "took care of things," but those were hardly calming words. I believe she didn't emerge from her protective fabric shield until morning and many months had passed until she set foot in our den.

Twenty years later...

I had just returned home from dinner with my brother and his family. My wife was out of town for the week and my son had moved to his own place just fourteen days earlier. I unlocked the front door and entered my dark, empty house. I tossed my keys on a table in the living room and proceeded up the staircase. When I reached the top, I fumbled for a light switch.

Then..... something. Something was there.

In the dark, something whizzed past my head and into the direction of the unlit den. Frantically, I flicked the light on to reveal a bat flying in mad circles around the ceiling. It was huge, brown-black, with a wingspan of at least forty feet. Maybe fifty (at least!).

"Motherfucker!," I muttered aloud, in assessment of the situation at hand. I repeated the expletive several more times, adopting it as my mantra. I ducked low, pulling the door closed behind me, thus sequestering the aeriform mammal. I ran downstairs to the basement and grabbed my trusty broom (possibly the same one from two decades earlier) and returned to the second floor of my house, prepared for combat. I slowly pushed the door ajar and slipped into the battle arena. The room was eerily still. Suddenly, the curtains rustled and the bat flew toward me. Hyperventilating, I swung the bristled sweeper recklessly above my head. The bat caromed off the wall behind me and came back for assault number two. I spun around, heart pounding ferociously in my chest, and swiped at the thing a second time. The bat momentarily landed on the curtains and, then just as quickly, descended for the kill. The bat soared right at me and I hit him square, as though laying down the perfect sacrifice bunt. The winged fur ball hit the floor and lay motionless. Now that it was immobilized, I had a better gauge of its actual size, which was that of a small child's mitten.  I retrieved a piece of cardboard from a nearby trashcan and swept the late varmint up. Once downstairs, I deposited my spoils into a plastic shopping bag and deposited that into our outside trashcan. I came back inside, washed the filthy memory from my hands and collapsed on the sofa.

I surprised myself with my own turns of bravery twenty years apart. If I get a bat in my house every twenty years, the next one is due when I'm seventy-one. By then — fuck it — let it get me.

The story continues HERE.

www.joshpincusiscrying.com

Riding that train

The morning began like every morning begins. My alarm went off at six and I smacked the snooze button every ten minutes until I kicked myself out of bed at 6:30. I showered, brushed my teeth and checked the mirror to see if I could get away without shaving for one more day. I exited the bathroom and headed downstairs. I flicked on our Keurig coffee maker and while the water was heating up I ran down the basement steps to grab a matching pair of socks out of the dryer. Back in the kitchen, I watched as hot water purged through my selection of K-Cup and emptied its brewed contents into a waiting mug. After adding a splash of half-and-half and one packet of Sweet 'n Low, I carried my coffee and my socks back upstairs to watch the first half-hour of The Today Show while I got dressed. As the clock came up on 7:40 am, I snapped off the TV and grabbed my cellphone and canvas messenger bag. Mrs. Pincus was asleep, still snuggled under several blankets, when I kissed her and whispered "goodbye". I crossed the hall to say "goodbye" to my son, curled up under his own blankets. Although they each uttered a closed-mouthed "hum", they may or may not have heard my actual farewell — as is the case most mornings. I scrambled down the stairs, grabbed my denim jacket and pulled it on as I hurried out the door. I ambled to the train station at the end of my block, less than a minute walk from my front door. Most mornings, I see my friend Randi and we ride the train together to our destination, as we both work in the same office building in center city Philadelphia. This particular morning, Randi was not on the platform. Too bad for me.

At 7:50, the train stops at Elkins Park and I get on. It then proceeds on to its scheduled station stops at Melrose Park, Fern Rock, Temple University and Market East until it reaches my journey's end, Suburban Station. My entire morning commute covers five stations and lasts approximately twenty-five minutes. When I ride with Randi, we are engaged in conversation that lasts the whole trip, usually continuing until we reach the elevators in our building's lobby. Since Randi was obviously relying on another route to work this morning, I turned to my dog-eared copy of Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter to pass the time. I boarded the train, selected a seat at the rear of a relatively empty car, pulled the book from my bag and began to read. I had been struggling through Miss McCullers' Southern Gothic debut, that it now had taken on the characteristics of a high-school reading assignment rather than a source of enjoyment. The train came to a stop at Melrose Park and, unable to focus, I returned the book to my bag and closed my eyes for a quick nap. Too bad for me.

Suddenly, my eyes shot open. The train was in a tunnel and the car lights were flickering. I was groggy and disoriented. Through bleary and unadjusted eyes, I looked at my watch and I saw it was 8:10. However, since I was in a tunnel, I didn't know which 8:10 of the day it was. I couldn't remember how long I had been asleep. The train pulled into Market East, the first underground station on my regular morning journey. My foggy and sleep-addled mind surmised that I was actually on my way home and it was 8:10 in the evening. I convinced myself that I must have traveled all the way to the end of my homecoming train's line in Glenside — where no train staff had awakened me — and now I was on a return trip to center city. In a panic, I hopped off the train and frantically dialed my wife at home. As the phone rang, I was annoyed that she had not called, wondering why I had not arrived home at my usual 5:30. After four or five rings, my wife's hushed voice whispered "Hello" from my cellphone's speaker. I blurted out, "I'm okay! I'm on my way home. I must have fallen asleep on the train, came back from Glenside and now I'm at Market East. I'm getting on a train to Elkins Park and I'll be home soon." I rambled on so quickly, I didn't allow my bewildered wife to get an interrupting word in. I paused and followed my rant with, "I can't believe you didn't call me! Didn't you wonder where I was?"

She was silent, then she cleared her throat and said, "Well, I was asleep" and she trailed off.

"I'm three hours late coming home and you didn't think to call me?" I was starting to get angry. "Well, forget it! I'll be home soon."

"What are you talking about? Why are you coming home?" She sounded as confused as I felt.

"I'm coming home!", I said one last time and I pushed the "END" button on my phone as I approached the information desk at Market East to ask the time for the next train to Elkins Park.

My wife sat in our darkened bedroom and stared blankly at the phone. The first thought to cross he mind was "Well, a twenty-seven year marriage was a good run." Knowing full well that I had just left the house twenty minutes earlier, she began to cry, assuming I had had a stroke while riding the train.

I boarded the Elkins Park-bound train and called home again. I lowered my voice, so as not to attract the attention of my fellow passengers to my slightly embarrassing situation. Once again, I explained the "fell asleep on the train" scenario to my emotional wife. During my explanation, the train emerged from the tunnel — into the harsh sunlight of the morning. Suddenly, it hit me. I had been asleep for merely moments, on my way to work — not hours, on my way home. It also occurred to me that Mrs. Pincus must have thought I had a stroke. "Um, I'll call you right back." I said to her and ended the call. All that had just transpired became instantly clear to me. I looked at my watch again and up to the sky and concluded the correct time of day. I jumped off the train at Temple University and I waited for the next train to my proper terminus. And I called my wife. Again.

Mrs. Pincus answered on the first ring. She hit me with a battery of inquiry. "Are you okay? Where are you? Did you have a stroke?" I assured her I was now fully aware of the situation and I was now headed in the right direction and I did not have a stroke. It took several repeat affirmations but I finally convinced her that I was, indeed, fine.

At last, I reached Suburban Station, ten minutes later than usual arrival. I walked my usual route to my office and as I snapped my office light on, two of my co-workers noted, "You're later than usual."

Too bad for me.