Learning how to live

The family at the table next to mine at Wendy's were almost like a television ad -- Three perfect children, quietly nibbling at their fries and their harried mother enjoying a break from cooking and other wifely duties.\nWhat happened next was equally TV-perfect. Any Madison Avenue exec could have scripted it. One of the children pointed to her kids' meal's Frosty and declared "It's a shake."\nAnother of the cherubs disagreed. "No, it's an ice cream," he said.\nThey argued over the matter in sitcom manner. \n"It's a shake," the first one repeated. \n"No, it's an ice cream," the second replied.\nThey volleyed back and forth a few times before the mother snapped, "You can call it an ice cream, and you can call it a shake, but just be quiet."\nThat wasn't the quick-witted, good-humored reply TV moms always have ready. She wasn't at all amused by the antics of her clever children. Why she sounded frustrated, or annoyed, or even upset. She'll never sell hamburgers if she feels like that.\nLike those children, most of us have unconsciously copied our speech, gestures and expressions from the teacher in the living room. This patient, caring instructor teaches us all how to fit in with whatever subgroup we want to join. With its humor, melodrama and good-looking examples, the television has displaced our old teachers, those fussy books and our boring families.\nOf course, the mother wasn't trying to sell anything. She was just a tired mother of three young kids, and wanted some quiet with her evening meal.\nHer children though, weren't attuned to her wants. They seemed like they spent their whole lives tuned in to something else -- Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel, perhaps. On cue, they could have shifted from arguing over the Frosty, to snatching bowls of cereal while telling the silly rabbit that Trix are for kids.\nTelevision's lessons are fast-paced and fun. Anything complex, abstract or ambiguous is reduced to "A Very Special Episode…."\nWe may be indifferent students of calculus, but we have all aced TV's tests. The rhythm of sitcom dialogue and the patter of the late night talk show rant are our native dialect. Even the man on the street and the woman in the audience are poised performers, ready to play the parts the director assigns them.\nIt wasn't always this way. Groucho Marx hosted the game show "You Bet Your Life" during TV's "I Love Lucy" period. The contestants on the show are ordinary people -- housewives, bus drivers, high school students. When Groucho asks them a question, they respond as though they're having an actual conversation. There is something quaintly touching about their eagerness to interact with Groucho as though he were a person, not a star.\nNobody today would do that on "Jeopardy!" or "Wheel of Fortune." We've all learned how to answer when Trebek asks us a question. We know there is no room for spontaneity on television, and we know if we want to make it on air, we must play by the medium's rules. \nThis willingness to surrender ourselves is fine, if kept to the few times in our lives when we're on television. But it's different when we behave by TVland's customs when we're in the real world. For those of us who have grown up in a world defined by television, we don't even know the difference between real emotions and staged performances. And like the children arguing over the taxonomy of the Frosty, we will find even our closest relationships poisoned because we have mastered the lessons of the tyrant of the living room, all too well.