FROZEN TV
DINNERS 
"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners."
- Johnny
Carson
What hath Cousin Philo
wrought? It's hard to imagine a world without television and everything that
followed from it. While much was good about it, I do lament the invention of
the frozen TV dinner. The food was absolutely wretched: rubbery chicken, fake
mashed potatoes with glue-like gravy, and those horrible huge green peas. Yuck!
But whatever harm those
dinners did to our stomachs was nothing compared to the damage they did to the
evening ritual of sharing family stories around a communal table. Having dinner
together - breaking bread and talking about the events of the day - were the
cords that held our clans together. In our race to plop ourselves in front of
prime-time TV, we unwittingly dissolved those ties.
So do I blame rubbery chicken, glue-like gravy, and Cousin Philo
for all the ills of the world? No, but I do wish we could turn off the TV (and
smart phones and X-Box) long enough to talk together, ask questions, and, yes,
tell some family stories. Come to think of it, isn't that why Netflix was
invented? And Priceless Conversations?
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