The house sat midway up the street and stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the surrounding homes. White peeling paint adorning its exterior. Every spring, grass made a futile attempt to grow on a barren dirt lawn. Despite three generations of one family living under its roof, few found time to care for the house. It showed. The home’s grimy appearance, coupled with the shrieks of screaming children, only underscored the point.
They were not a very wealthy family. The adults of the house rarely held a job for more than a month or two at a time. With five daughters and countless grandchildren living with them, money was very hard to come by. They had a beat-up car sitting in their driveway, but because of the lack of fuel money, any time anyone wanted to go somewhere, they required a ride that would pick them up. Their two-story house was in a state of perpetual decay. It was barren of any unnecessary items aside from the old stereo kept in the garage and the wide-screen television in the living room.
A growing number of family members spent the majority of their time around the television instead of working. The daughters, who had spent their youth outside, were raising their children in the glow of the “educational” programs that television ads championed as beneficial for growing minds. Their parents gathered everyone around whenever they could to watch their favorite sitcoms. It was rare to see anyone who lived in the home full-time away for more than an hour or two.
Even then, they only disappeared to return with grocery bags filled of bare necessities and snacks. Sometimes, they would bring along newcomers to watch television with them. Lights from the TV filled one particular upper floor room every single night. The lights glowed brilliantly through an empty window devoid of blinds or curtains. The silhouettes in front of the screen told the story better than any words could. For that household, family time was television time.
Rumors spread through the neighborhood that the call of television meant so much to them that they had chosen to pay for their cable package over their basic utilities. These rumors were confirmed when several family members went door-to-door, asking anyone who opened their door to use the restroom. The reason behind this, they said, was due to the home no longer having running water. They weren’t just without water, though. The family began patrolling the street for anyone who was willing to give up a blanket or two. The neighbors realized they had lost their heat as well. They had chosen their electric bill and their television over heating their home. Now they were suffering through the cold of late fall with almost no protection from the changing elements.
By the time winter proper rolled around, they were gone, evicted from the house for non-payment on their mortgage. But not without finally losing their last salvation. Days before they packed up and drove off into the sunset, their power had been shut off. This forced them to spend more time outside than they had in years. When they removed the flat-screen television that had meant so much to them as a family, the reality of the situation set in. Their time in the house was over. There were no goodbyes or fanfare when they left, just the loss of a family that had let television, their one true vice, be its downfall.
The city bought and refurbished the house. They turned it into a home for welfare recipients who had very little else in life going for them. To this day, no other family has moved in with such a crippling addiction to something beyond their needs. There have been rowdy children who throw dirt at passing cars, families with more children than they could comfortable fit in bedrooms, and the current family seems to have a new friend staying with them weekly. Yet there has never been a family quite like the one originally in that house, family-oriented in all the wrong ways, allowing television to run the show under their roof when they should have been programming their own lives in rich and useful ways.
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Amanda Fox is a writer from the Colorado Springs area.
