When I was a kid I remember staying up really, really late at night on the weekends, watching my little black and white TV in my bedroom. I’d watch anything that was on: movies, re-runs, late-night talk shows, things that I shouldn’t have been watching on a specific Canadian cable channel (you know the one) – everything with the sound turned down so low that I could just make it out but no one in the rest of the house could. It was a specific type of watching television – a guilty one – half delirious from a lack of sleep so that I was never quite sure if what I was watching was real or dreamt. I had exactly one vice in those days and TV was it. I’d sit there, or more accurately, lie there on my bedroom floor, propped up by pillows and covered with a blanket and just watch and watch and watch. I could afford to do it as a kid because, most likely, I didn’t have anything to do the next day until the TV watching started up again. Just having the TV on was soothing and addictive.

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