A Little History

To kick this thing off I thought I would share a little history of the “creative endeavor”. I had a humanities class in high school that focused on philosophy, art, expression, thought…okay well perhaps it didn’t really “focus” on any one thing. This course was led by Mr. Monroe. There weren’t really grades, I don’t know anyone who didn’t make an “A” by simply showing up and participating, and there wasn’t much structure. So it was really my kind of class. The one homework assignment we had for each grading cycle was to perform some sort of creative endeavor, and then share this with the class. Many students made wonderful art projects, shared poems, experimented with a new hobby etc. My most memorable creative endeavor was a social experiment.

At the wise age of 17 I had decided that my family was spending entirely too much time in front of the television. There was a t.v. in every room of the house sans the bathrooms, and I don’t remember too many nights when there wasn’t at least one t.v on in the house. I decided our family needed to shake things up a bit…ya know like talk to each other, eat dinner together, interact, play board games—something! So this is what I did. I asked my friend Sarah who had a small truck to help me out. When went to my house after school, and before my parents were home and took every television out of the house. All five of the t.v.’s were then loaded into the bed of her truck and taken over to my friend Tracy’s house. Here they were stored in secrecy. Tracy’s mom, Cindy had agreed to keep my secret with me.

When I came home I entered upon a scene I did not expect. My step-father was furious with me! Apparently he had not seen the note I left warning him that I had taken the t.v’s and not to worry and had immediately called the police to report a theft. Luckily he did see my note soon there-after and called the police to notify them that his step-daughter was the thief, so no need to file a report. He demanded that I bring the televisions back (I had actually never seen him so angry—he is not a short tempered man). Even though I was a little bit afraid, I didn’t back down. I told him this was part of a social experiment and that they were going to be gone for exactly one week, then they would return safely. I thought his anger would subside once he found out it was for school, but this didn’t help my case much. Fortunately my mother, a strong women, stood up for me and said although I shouldn’t have stolen the t.v.’s it would be good for us to go a week without the t.v.

My brothers had a similar reaction to that of my step-father’s. Needless to say they were unhappy. I thought that my plan would force us all to get to know each other better (after all we were a blended family that didn’t always get along), but really it only meant that I spend more time with my parents playing board games in the evening. On day 2 of this social experiment I caught a side-ways glimpse into my step-brother’s room. There was a blanket covering a very t.v.-looking object. Surprise, surprise there was a t.v under there.

In short my creative endeavor showed me more about my family than I would have realized. Not because we really spent more quality time together, but more because of how they handled the loss of such a valued family member. I am not bashing my family members here, they are all great people. But it was quite revealing to see the different reactions of the family members. Looking back on this experiment that took place a decade ago, I realize that the reactions I saw from my family was probably largely in part to due to a lack of control, and less due to the lack of television. Nevertheless I did spend that week without the murmuring of night-time t.v. shows on in the background and more time talking with the people I lived with.

Creative endeavor accomplished.