False. I remember my best day of television like it happened yesterday. It was a Sunday night -- December 27, 1981, specifically, though I had to look that up -- and my brother was home from college. He and my mom were talking in the family room, so at 11:00 p.m. I went to watch Doctor Who on the small TV in my bedroom. The episode that evening was "Logopolis." Back in those Days, Doctor Who was very much a cult show in the United States. Merchandise was hard to find, and news about the show was pretty much impossible to come by, so I could not have been more surprised when, at the end of the episode, the Doctor regenerated. I knew that such a thing was possible, of course, but I had no clue it was going to happen in that episode. I'll never forget it, and I'll always regret that no future regeneration will take me by surprise the way that one did.
But that's hardly the only memorable TV-watching experience I've had. I remember sitting in a hotel room in Orlando with
boliver, rustydog and watching the Angel series finale while vacationing together. I remember the joy of singing along with a roomful of my Television Without Pity buddies as we watched the Buffy musical episode together. I remember how creepy it felt being on the 8th floor of a nine-story Federal office building as I stood with my coworkers in Sen. Wellstone's office watching news coverage of the bombing of the nine-story Federal office building in Oklahoma City. I remember sitting in the Rorem Hall TV lounge when Eric Clapton was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live in 1990: how excited I was when he came on to perform an unprecedented (in my experience) third song, and how beautiful that performance of "Wonderful Tonight" was.One might argue that in some of those instances, it wasn't the TV-watching itself that was so memorable, but rather who I was with or where I was or what was going on. But to my way of thinking, the TV-watching was central to the experience. It's why all those Buffy fans were gathered in one room in the first place. It's why we were all huddled around the office manager's desk. It's why I was hanging out in the dorm that Saturday evening in 1990 instead of at Perkins.
Maybe the person you created that image up there is right, and the kid in the picture won't have treasured memories of watching TV. But if so, I think it's because he wasn't watching right.
