Losing (remote) control

It’s Friday night. You’ve had an awful week at work. The baby has finally settled down and is sleeping restfully. You have a case of ice cold Pabst Light in the fridge and your beer glasses frosting in the freezer. You’ve just finished eating a great home-cooked meal by the wife that was inexpensive but you didn’t overeat, so you can just unwind and enjoy perhaps multiple Pabst Light. You have plans to run to the movie store quick to pick up a movie - a comedy that you really want to watch, though the wife has remained suspiciously uncommitted to this for some reason.

Then suddenly, as you’re flipping channels, even magnanimously stopping for a moment on the Food Network at your wife’s request, you happen by channel 73 (Oxygen), which usually has horrible movies or lame drama re-runs. The time is 7:03pm. Your wife exclaims “wait, don’t change it! I’ve been wanting to see this version of Pride and Prejudice for so long. I can’t believe it’s actually on regular TV!”

As a man, you have two choices: simply overrule because you’re presently in control of the remote and the last thing you want to do is watch a slow-moving period piece; or, ruin your night by buckling under the weight of wife’s demands. Of course, you buckle. You reason quickly to yourself that she did just make you yet another great meal and she too has had a long week. After about 1hour and 15 minutes, you finally start getting sucked into the plot and by 1 hour and 30 minutes, you are ashamed to admit that you’ve become desperate to know if she’ll land Mr. Darcy. But throughout you cannot help but wonder: was life back then really so incredibly lame? Sure, they had nice castles or giant houses to live in with lots of land to “behold”, they didn’t have to really “work” but just sat around and had money somehow and many of them had servants doing everything for them. But “fun” for them was drawing, chasing each other (adults included), playing an out of tune harpsichord, going to a Ball where you hop around like a fruit and drinking spirits that tasted like rubbing alcohol. No thanks.

(By the way, it took courage for me to write this as I’m sure to draw a strong rebuke from Brother Steve - but I’ve prepared myself and know I deserve it. I already know his point will be that sure, the 1800s was characterized by many people having a major non-fun time, but isn’t it even less fun to watch this non-fun on TV on a Friday night in 2008?).