Buh-Bye, Cable-TV ...

I'm not the quickest guy to act on technological changes. Our son had a cellphone before we did (he was in college, late 80s)--and our first cell stayed in the glove compartment of the car. After all, when else would you need such a thing except to call AAA for car trouble?

We stayed with flip-phones for a while, later on, and I did not pop for a Blackberry until just about the time when everyone else had given up on them and was iPhoning.

I wasn't always this ... dilatory. Early in my teaching career, I liked to be one of the first to try new technology in the classroom. I shot video of my class years before it became easy; I showed laserdiscs! (They lasted on the cultural scene about, oh, seven minutes?) And I was one of the first to use cassette audio tapes!

I was using digital projectors, etc. near the end--though I never really got into whiteboards. (Seemed like a lot of hassle for not much?!!?) And I loved using the online school services--GradeQuick, Moodle, Blackboard. (Saved lots of problems.) But I have to say I was S-L-O-W to give up the overhead projector, a device I was using my very first year in the classroom (1966-67) and was using, at times, very near the end (2010-11).

My dad gave up on all of this very quickly. He never used an ATM, had a guy pump gas for him. He didn't learn to use a computer (though my mom became fairly adept with one). As I've written here before (probably more than once), the last device he really knew how to use was a TV remote.

I have some (older) friends who are still resolutely anti-tech. No cellphones. No computers. Etc.

Okay, let's get to the title of this post. Today, I cancelled our cable-TV service--something lots of you did a long, long time ago. We hadn't watched any cable at all--in months. We stream everything now. But ... month after month I paid that cable bill--paid for a service I was no longer using. Now that's loyalty.

Or stupidity. 

Whichever.

Anyway, we are now cable-less for the first time in decades. The company tried to talk me out of it on the phone.

But I was resolute. 

(Okay, they'd talked me out of it on one earlier occasion.)

At the store, where I dropped off our two cable boxes this morning, they tried to talk me out of it again.

But I was resolute.

Really.

Meanwhile, we'll see how it goes. But we will not, of course, admit to error. That just ain't American, you know?