Broadcast me a joyful noise
Here's something I remembered today:
When I was little (5 years old or so), I did not understand the concept of TV shows that were "filmed before a live studio audience."1 I thought that what I was hearing during TV shows was the sound of other families laughing and clapping from their homes. In other words, I thought that the speaker on the TV set was also a microphone that broadcast our applause to everyone else watching.
This misunderstanding provided the following challenges for me:
- I did not know why my family did not clap during TV shows, since apparently everyone else did. So to be more like other families, sometimes I would clap during shows, but only when I was watching TV by myself.
- I also thought it would be fun to do something different so other people would hear me over the TV. So sometimes I would put my mouth close to the TV speaker and yell random things into it, hoping that other families would hear me and be freaked out.
1Once I finally figured out that I was mistaken about the two-wayness of the TV, I still thought it was weird that they said "filmed before a live studio audience" because I thought it was common sense that they would not have filmed it in front of a dead audience.
offered up to the world by CoachDub @ 7:36 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
This is quite adorable. There was a dead studio audience in one of the greatest movies of all time, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
I used to think there were tiny men inside the dashboard of our car, performing the songs we heard on the radio. But that's nothing compared to your story. Hilarious.
Really, though, aren't the Nielsens just a slightly more advanced version of what you were doing? Maybe right now you could yell into the speaker: "Two And A Half Men sucks! Bring back Growing Pains!"
That's amazing.
As a child I used to think that TP-ing a person house meant making it look like an indian tepee - and toilet paper just seemed to be the best way.
as long as were on the topic of having been dumb children...
first i have to try to explain a certain phenomenon, maybe somebody will understand what i mean...
you know how, when you put your hand out in front of you at approximately arm's length, and then look beyond it, say, at a computer screen, theres a weird transparent silhouette of a few of your fingers... because you've got two eyes, and one of them sees the things beyond your hand, and one of them is blocked by your hand....?
anyway, if you've followed me so far, you might find this funny...
as a child, i thought that i had some sort of limited x-ray vision because when i did that sort of thing, as mentioned above, i figured i was just looking through part of my hand...
I've come a long way.
Oh, I follow you, Tom. I used to love looking through my hand. When I wasn't busy yelling at people who were also watching Diff'rent Strokes, that is.
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