Although we'll be buying two TVs when my wife returns to the Philippines, I don't have even one in my house right now. I don't miss watching television, though there's a bit of history behind that.

As I was growing up in Coolidge, Arizona, there were almost always two televisions in the house; one in the living room and one in the den. Both were black and white TVs until my parents bought their first color one in 1972. After that, the color one resided in the living room. It didn't matter to me because I never had the chance to choose what I wanted to watch. I had eight siblings and the older ones controlled the sets.

For most of my adult years, I had a television blaring at me. First, while single and living in the single barracks wherever I was stationed and second, from the time I got married and onwards because the wife and children were TV addicts. I never really had much time to watch because I spent at least 80 percent of my waking hours involved in my career, the U.S. Marine Corps.

In 1996, I was transferred to the base in Barstow, California, and I didn't take my family with me. We had a nice house in Phoenix that we didn't want to sell or rent out. My wife didn't want to give up her job either (Barstow jobs were scarce). I ended up commuting back and forth on odd weekends and 12 of those hours were spent driving to and from home. Television reception was horrible there. I didn't bother putting a TV in my room for that reason. We did have a community TV room with cable, but it was almost always tuned in to sports channels. I'm not into watching sports and I stopped watching TV completely for those two years.

After I retired in 1998 and lived at home again, I never felt the desire to sit and watch more than a couple of hours of TV with my family during the week. I had too much going on with work and other activities. Sure, I would glance at it every now and then because my boys were always watching TV when they weren't playing video games.

We haven't put a TV in our current house since moving in, in September of 2006. My wife, when she was here, always went over to her mother's house to watch TV in the evening. They watched the Tagalog dramas together and it's just not my cup of tea, even though I understand 90 percent of the language. I just don't get into soap operas, whether they're cleverly disguised as movies or not.

I do miss the cacophony coming from a TV in the same room as I. It makes the room sound "lived in". I don't miss the garbage that modern television has to offer.