The righteous battle against blaring TVs in waiting rooms

The first time I saw a television set in a doctor's waiting room was sometime in the 1980s. It was one of the big cabinet TVs with lots of wood and an amazingly large screen: 19 inches.

The TV in the waiting room was tuned to "As the World Turns," a soap opera that had captured the attention of an entire men's dorm at my college some 20 years earlier. Here's what I remember about seeing the familiar soap opera again after so many years: I immediately knew where we were in the plot line, because in two decades of real time, only a week or so had passed in soap-opera time. All the characters were familiar. The situations were just as I remembered them.

At the time, TVs in waiting rooms were somewhat rare. So were TVs in restaurants, bars and even churches. Nowadays, everything seems to operate with a TV making noise -- in the background if not right in your face.

I remember when patients waiting to see a doctor were treated to videos full of medical advice and health tips. But if you have to wait very long, you soon tire of seeing the same message repeated over and over and over and over. Such exposure does not, I assure you, contribute to your healing.

As I get fussier -- let's be honest, older -- I have less and less tolerance for intrusive TVs everywhere. As a matter of fact, I have started to take an active part in abolishing the scourge of meaningless noise when I'm waiting to see a doctor.

The first thing I do when I see the ubiquitous TV blaring in a waiting room is to try and figure out how to turn it off. That's not always easy. For one thing, there may be someone in the waiting room who is watching a program on TV, trying to take his or her mind off whatever ails them. I have no desire to pick a fight, so I look around to see if anyone is actually watching the TV. I ask, "Does anyone mind if I turn off the TV?"

This annoys the receptionists immensely. Among their many duties, they have been entrusted with the safeguarding of the holy remote control. Never mind that they sometimes change channels willy-nilly even if someone is engrossed in a rerun of "Bewitched." (Yes, that show won't go away, no matter how hard I twitch my nose.) But if you try to change the channel yourself, receptionists tend to weigh in as authority figures. They issue ultimatums. They threaten, silently, to make you wait even longer in a waiting room full of hacking germ spreaders. That should teach me.

But it doesn't. Like any anarchist, I am compelled to try harder in my quest to turn off noise -- making TVs which serve no purpose other than to Â… make noise.

Occasionally I find a kindred spirit in waiting rooms. When I ask if anyone minds if I turn off the TV, I sometimes get a reply: "Please turn it off. I tried to find the off button and couldn't." That's when I impart my vast knowledge of electronic devices. I reach behind the TV and do what any highly skilled engineer would do: I unplug the TV. Works every time.

Saturday I was in a waiting room while my wife was being seen by a doctor. I soon found the ever-present TV's off button and made the noise go away. There were no other patients in the waiting room. There were two receptionists with little to do. They did a bit of receptionist stuff. They chatted about their holiday get-togethers. They discussed the weather a bit. Then one of the receptionists picked up a remote and turned the TV in the waiting room back on.

There comes a point in everyone's life when bold decisions must be made. Here was an opportunity to stand up for silence. I could be valiant on the battlefield of sanity. I could literally take two steps over to the TV and turn it off again. I could even unplug it so the receptionist's weapon would be rendered useless. I could Â….

That's when my wife walked back into the waiting room, having been diagnosed and issued some prescriptions.

Those receptionists may never know they came this close -- this close! -- to a showdown that might have revolutionized the way sick people wait to see the practitioners of the healing arts.

But that will all have to wait for another day.

"As the World Turns" is a piece of history now. No more daily episodes in which time moves so slowly that a character's pregnancy can last 27 years. Really.

I'll bet there's a cable channel that airs old operas. When I find it, I'll let you know.

Or it may already be playing on the TV in your favorite doctor's waiting room.

Lucky you.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.