Last week my wife was hospitalized overnight. She is home and fine, which is one good thing to report. Another is that I forgot about my campaign to eliminate television in public places until almost the end. That’s because for whatever reason, this time I did not encounter waiting rooms with television screens on every wall. No CNN idiots screaming at me whichever way I turned.
This time she was in the Borgess Hospital in Kalamazoo instead of the Battle Creek Health System, which had an extreme version of televisionitis when she was there for outpatient surgery last March.
Maybe I’m comparing apples to oranges. Maybe if we went through Borgess’s outpatient system we’d find the same difficulty in escaping the televisions. I don’t know. All I can say is that my encounters with Borgess as a visitor were television free. (In the evening I took along my computer so we could watch part of a Russian movie together as we do at home most evenings.)
On the downside, the last few days we ate in a some fast food places that had public televisions. They weren’t as extreme as some places I’ve seen, and the volume was turned down very low, but still. Maybe I need to make up some cards to leave with the managers to explain why we’re walking out of such places without buying any food.
And I need a better acronym. NOTVIPP is pronounceable, but not catchy enough.