Pastimes

I believe I am the only child I know of who grew up without a television set at home.

I used to either change topics or walk away whenever my classmates exchanged words on television stories. My unnerving conclusion was that people will laugh at me when they found me tongue-tied with the language of television. I use the past tense not because I have become familiar with the television stories but because I get over the inferiority complex of growing up without television.

My love for the alphabet and reading, which endures, started ever since my early years without television. I began to learn writing before going to kindergarten. In my story books, before I could read them for my younger sister, I fell in love with the legends of Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Huckleberry Finn, Oliver Twist, and even Ali Baba. I missed numerous television programmes, but I could never miss the chance to visit the library every week. Today my wife still find it unbelievable to hear that I was the librarian throughout the six years at high school.

I am not going to enter the debate here about whether television is a vice or not. There is barely an inkling of what my childhood was about to change if my mum bought a television. But I have the feeling, after so many years, that the absence of television at home left me much more time to read books, which by itself is a blessing. Without a doubt it is.