cutting the cord.

the best friends of my childhood, the zehr girls. from left: jackie, me, diane, chris and twin sister jean with our beloved dog trixie. to me, this is childhood. this is summer. this is happiness. (my childhood home, circa 1974)

are you brave enough to cut the cord? on cable, i mean? i'm strongly considering it. two weeks from now i will (probably) be untethered from the relationship that has me stockholm-syndromed within an inch of my life.

when i was a kid, TV was free. we got three network channels. we watched mutual of omaha's wild kingdom, and saturday morning cartoons and that was about it. maybe a few episodes of brady bunch or gomer pyle, pfc. but there was no such thing as being a couch potato for hours on end in front of the TV. and it didn't cost 150 bucks a month.

there was no on demand programming, no tivo, no dvr. no disney channel or cartoon network. no spongebob. no pay-per-view.

and (gasp!) no internet.

and yet, somehow, miraculously, we were happy.

my sisters and brother and i played outside and built tree forts and dug for fossils and drew and painted and played green ghost and red rover til the sun went down. we read books and rode bikes and raced milk weed pods in the creek.

we had sleep-overs with our best friends and played make-believe with our stuffed monkeys (we were too rough and tumble for dolls).

we baked cookies and played monopoly and did our chores. we shucked corn and picked beans and weeded the garden.

we didn't have cable and we didn't die.

so when the boy and I move, in less than two weeks, i'm thinking of cutting the cord on this dysfunctional and expensive relationship i have with my local cable provider, and just see how it feels to go off the grid, so to speak.

can we do it? for real?

stay tuned.