How to Watch TV/ In the Twenty-First Century

 How to Watch TV/ In the Twenty-First Century

So what did you think of Archie Bunker last night?  He took a swallow of water and crumbled his cone-shaped paper cup, hesitating and looking up, just before he cast it into the used, cone-shaped paper cup bin.  She gave the TV show a moment’s thought and said, I laughed so hard I thought I’d pee.  They shared their favorite lines from the night before that was when the boss came through the pantry doorway.  They both turned chuckling and walked back to their desks. 

The desks were both gray metal with rubbery tops full of pencils and files.  She had a phone on hers but he did not.  His had a bag lunch in the bottom drawer.  She went out at noon to Chock Full of Nuts.  They met at five-thirty for a drink in the bar around the corner from the Woolworth building then she took the subway to Riverdale and he drove his car.   Over the GWB to Fort Lee. 

He kissed his wife hello and, it being Thursday, commented on her hair.  He ate the meatloaf listening to WABC and looking out at the view from the eleventh floor.  She had a Swanson’s chicken pot pie and watched the New Jersey sun drop out of the sky.  At nine o’clock they both tuned-in to a re-run of the Twilight Zone.  The one where the little man in the future is left all alone with broken glasses and now he can’t read.  At the water cooler tomorrow they will dissect the show and conclude it was not quite as good as the tiny people in the tiny town or the one with the ape on the wing of the plane. 

He left his wife twenty years ago.  They just had differences they couldn’t resolve.  She never married.  Her career came first.  Now she lives in Long Island in a house on the shore and she hardly watches TV anymore.  He tells her about Netflix and his digital recorder at lunch over drinks in a midtown restaurant and she can’t help it but her mind just wanders.  She walks her dog and takes a dip in the ocean and her TV just stays on the cooking channel.  She turns it on while she eats her dinner and does the dishes and reads a fat novel.