Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

I’ve oozed from the primordial soup.

I’m threatening to become an owner-operator of a TV.

Please hold your applause until the end. 

A TV? Welcome me to the 21st Century. What next? An indoor outhouse? Wearing shoes in the summer? My ancestors went barefooted all year, wrapping barbed wire around their tootsies when the conditions were icy.

The Batt Cave hasn’t had a working TV for many years and life went on. I’ve been so busy amassing mansions, yachts and Ferraris, I’ve had no time to watch TV. Our previous TV set worked until the day after its 12-month warranty expired and it began changing channels on its own as if someone had fallen asleep on top of its remote. That brought a halt to its presence in our lives. The absence of a TV hasn’t been a bad thing. We haven’t had to battle for control over the remote and its 479 mysterious buttons. Without televised football, there was no need to leap on and off the Vikings bandwagon. That’s exercise, but not enough physical activity to overcome the high blood pressure their games cause. I didn’t miss watching football games from a fetal position.

We were blessed by being unable to watch…