It was sometime around the middle of January that I started compiling this list. For those of you who do not know a lot about SHU (and here I assume that I'm addressing a vast majority of you), we have a very long Christmas break. We're off for about six weeks. And, yes, six weeks away from school is a large amount of time and very welcome by the end of the first semester, but there comes a point, generally around the middle of January, when you realize you can no longer pretend you're spending hours in front of the television to rejuvenate from the fall semester. Your batteries have long ago recharged and now you're just being sort of shameless in your sloth. It's sad, but not the kind of sadness that motivates one to change. More accurately the kind of sadness that motivates one to sigh forlornly and eat a leftover Christmas cookie. You know, that really specific kind of sadness.
Anyway, I was telling you about this list.
Well, because of the t.v.'s strong gravitational pull during the middle of January, I saw a lot of advertisements for the medical drama Off the Map. If anyone is unfamiliar with the premise of this show, because you didn't spend two months living on your couch, all you really need to know for the purposes of this post is that good-looking doctors (are there any other kind on television?) are working in this jungle-esque place. In the most common commercial for the show, one of the doctors spontaneously leaps off a cliff and into the ocean. This moment began my list.
Things I Will Never Do, No Matter What, Even Though I Saw Them Happen on TV
1) Spontaneously Cliff-Dive
Maybe I watched too many of those "we videotaped this gruesome accident" shows with my grandfather when I was young. Maybe I've just never experienced a moment of euphoria so intense that I've felt compelled to leap from a great height. Maybe I just enjoy being able to move all of my limbs too much. But my first thought when I see television characters whooping with joy and flinging themselves from cliffs into a body of water beneath is always, "How do they know how deep that water is?" For real though, the water is lapping against the jagged rocks beneath these people, and they're just thinking "yay." How do they know that water isn't, like, two inches deep? Would I ever cliff-dive? Perhaps. If someone measured the depth of the water, tested the wind resistance, and then, you know, went first.
2) Be the "Don't Worry, I'll Hold Them Off" Person
In chase scenes, especially if it's a small group of people running from another group of assailants, there pops up, in the moment where the window of hope is slowly closing, a person who volunteers to stay behind and fight off the attackers to buy his or her friends some more time to escape. Um, no thank-you. Like, that's all brave and whatever, but in these situations, if that person isn't badly outnumbered, then the would-be hero is insurmountably out-powered, and the attackers are held off for, like, a second longer. Usually this selfless person isn't even a primary character, and quite often this person is offering this sacrifice as an act of redemption for sucking for the entire movie. Dude, if I can't even be featured favorably in the movie, I am not going to undergo this painful death to buy the protagonist some time to run off, get trapped somewhere, and end up facing the antagonist at the end anyway. I'd rather serve out my redemption in my long life by stopping completely at stop signs from now on, or actually smiling at people I vaguely know and pass in the halls instead of pretending to text as they walk by.
3) Abruptly End Phone Conversations
It's an odd staple of television that when phone conversations take place in order to provide some sort of exposition or reveal a long-kept secret, people just hang up without actually saying goodbye. I don't understand this break from reality, and it bothers me, because I would be calling someone back if I was all, "I've unlocked the secret code! You must listen to the green rooster crow at midnight and then burn the bridge to the island of the harvest moon!" and the person on the other end was like, "Ah, I thought so." Click. Would an "OK, thank-you. Talk to you later" really take that much more time? Usually the person that is hung up on has just done a considerable amount of work or uncovered some really stressful piece of information, so that makes the dropped call theme even more annoying.
4) Be the Person Who Sees Where that Noise is Coming From
This one pretty much speaks for itself. We've all seen horror movies where someone cheerfully jumps up and volunteers to investigate some strange noise, likely thinking some variance of, "'Tis the wind and nothing more," but being, always, hopelessly, obviously, fatally wrong. We can play nose goes to figure out who has to be the detective of the day.
5) Assume Villain is Dead
Ever watched Zombieland where we're encouraged to "double-tap," or, rather, shoot the bad guy more than once? Agreed. I don't even know why you wouldn't.
6) Give Cryptic Answers to Straightforward Questions
This doesn't really bother me, because only in fiction can people be so vague and metaphorical without having the person talking to them just give up and walk away, but I just know I'd never do it. "Where are you heading?" "Away from here." (Often said while looking moodily out a window) Dude, the person does not truly care where you're going. He or she was just trying to be polite. Stop making people work so hard to talk to you.
7) Be Stoic about a Life-Threatening Injury
It's not just the "No, no, I'm fine" response to being shot or stabbed that baffles me, but also the not saying anything about the injury or ailment. People on television will be hurt and not say a word so they don't distract their team from whatever mission they're on. Or, they'll find out they have some debilitating disease and keep it a secret so no one feels sorry for them. If someone shot a gun around me, I'd constantly be like, "You remember the one time I almost got shot?" or if I found out I had an illness that could possibly, one day affect my sight, every day I'd be like, "Well, since I'm going to go blind soon....le sigh." And most people I know would be the same, so I don't really get why television wants us to think people are selfless. We're not buying it, t.v.
8) Not Lock the Door when Partaking in R-Rated Activities
No one locks doors on t.v. In fact, privacy in general does not seem to matter often. Cheating on a wife? Oh, don't bother with the deadbolt. Selling drugs? Let's exchange goods by the open window. I'm so paranoid when I'm doing anything even mildly less than acceptable that I cannot imagine not being the most annoying, neurotic "OK, but do you know for sure that the walls are soundproof?" type of villain in the world.
Surely the list could continue, but in the interest of your time, and, frankly, interest, I'll just end by asking if there's anything you frequently see on television, but would never, ever attempt. As always, happy reading.
