The Fascination of a TV series

Having a TV in my childhood was a privilege of a chosen families. Not every house had it - because you could only get it with permission from your professional union, and then, you had to wait months or years for your turn to get one from the electronics store. I never had neither TV nor video at home. But my grandparents, who already were retired, had a huge TV in a box made of polished wood with 6 buttons on it's side.

Television was playing such an important role in our lives, what we knew by heart all TV schedules for all (or, better to say, for both existing) TV channels. Every Sunday we had cartoons - and exactly in five minutes to four somebodies mother was giving a sign in a window: “Cartooooons!” - and the whole crowd of kids was running to one of a lucky TV owner, to watch 45 minutes of 30 years old Donald Duck series.

Even now, I still have no TV at home. I don't have a habit to stare into blue screen for hours after the evening meal. Sometimes I feel envy, when I see images of a happy families, sitting altogether on the sofa and watching something - I cannot share their joy, they know something I don't understand.

I still remember the very first TV series I saw. It was an endless Brazilian story of a poor slave girl, suffering in from the power of plantators with her happy marriage with one of these evil guys in the end. In original this series were about 200 parts long, but it was adapted for NEISKUSHENNYJ TV watchers into 13 sequence long story - and, believe me, it was the longest movie I've seen by that time.

Times were changing, cheap latinamerican and even first local series rushed into the fight for a place in front of TV watcher's eyes. For me TV schedule turned into the lottery: unpredictable mess of unknown shows and programs. I was lost in a world of 100 pages thick weekly TV "forecasts".

And when the new technology came to change this world. Digital TV and Internet based channels gave the opportunity to create own TV playing lists, full of favorite programs and shows. And that was a time when TV finally got me on it's hook. Now I could watch TV right at my working desk - in a small window in the upper corner of my monitor. Some people prefer radio, some people listen to music, but I trace the main line of TV adventures of my favorite serials. I don't have to wait for a next part, I can watch all of them in a row, season after season, I can stop it anytime I want, I can rewind it to see some special moment, or I can just send it to the background and just listen to the dialogs.

As a person, who's not used to waist time in front of a TV, I enjoy my new way of watching TV. New genre of TV series, wrote and shoot especially for a young non-teenagers isn't worth to watch it seriously, but they are perfect as a background noise while I'm working. In some sense they imitate a sound of an ocean behind my windows, they give a light scent of a breeze to the air, and a touch of adventure to my routine work. Lost islands, ordinary life of superheros, mega-attractive workers of casual services, such as police, library or pizza delivery became my close friends and neighbours.

So, exactly as Ray Bradbury wrote in his "Fahrenheit 451", TV shows becoming members of a families. They replace all these people who was surrounding us in archaic villages, they feed our urban hunger for a human relationships.

CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

When I was small, there was a big yard in front of our house. The house was shaped as a Russian letter Г. Close to it's shortest elbow there was a hill with a park on it. We liked to play on that hill.

After the Second World War there was a dancing place left around a huge oak, surrounded by bushes and benches. Summer evenings in Estonia are not too dark, it was enough with light for to see whom you want to dance with.

On another side of the hill there was a two-stored stone house with a cellar windows, visible from the street side. Before a war it was a manor together with a park. In my time this house belonged to pioneers – the communist youth. It was a club with lots of activities for children . My sister tried to learn Esperanto there. We could see airplane models in the cellar windows and hear heels stepping one- two- three in a rhythm of waltz.

On the other side of hill there was a short way to the center of the town. On the hill slope, there were stone blocks with letters graved on stone's surface, made for a decades and decades go, but still visible. I guess there was a cemetery long time ago when this part of the town - almost a city center now! – was a suburb. We liked to glide on the sledge down from the hill at winters, when there was snow. And it was, because winters were much colder 20 years ago.

Near the manor there was a garden with fruit trees, bewildered by that time, but still bringing some sour apples. And who was the first to taste? Of course, boys who played football under that trees.

Across the street in front of the manor there was another park with a huge greenhouse in it. It was a part of pioneers’ club where children could learn plants and biology. It was closed at summers, but we helped the master to water patches and to take away grass. The master was a student at biology department, a son to one famous scientist. He became a politician politician. Every August he was inviting us to a fest with a cake as thanks for our help.

At the longest elbow of our house there was a kindergarten, located in a stylish house with long high windows. The space inside was split into two stores by inbuilt floor inside. Behind a house there was a playing yard. During week-ends kindergarten was closed and we played on their territory. Now this building got a tower to crown it's roof and a parking place to hide a playing ground. There was was a church in that building before war, and it has turned into church again nowadays. That’s why it has such a special high windows.

Later there was a multi store building with underground parking raised right in the center of our yard and shielded as so we couldn’t see the hill and pioneers’ house and greenhouse any more. I don’t know if modern children are allowed to play outside our old houses yard nowadays.

How childish are children nowadays? How do they build their worlds? And what can happen if children don’t live a full life, if they don’t play all that games which have to be played before they meet real life? How can they play their adult roles without training in their own world while they are young?

…There are no pioneers in Estonia now, but passing by the former pioneers’ club I can hear children voices singing songs and laughing in the windows…