Innocence Lost

I have no idea how technology functions. Television, for example. How do they get those pictures on a screen in my house? I'm curious as to how television works, just as I'm curious as to how the book I'm reading right now ends. Maybe I'll skip to the end and read the last page, but I know that if I do I'll lose most of my interest in the plot. It's like eating desert before dinner or finding out who won the Superbowl before you watch it (granted, you are in Kyrgyzstan and you have to wait two months for the tape to arrive, but still . . .). Yesterday, I drove down to Portland to pick up Noah the Dog where he was patiently waiting for me at the news station. My brother-in-law decided to show me around 'the compound' so that I could see what a real TV station looks like. Oh bliss! Oh lucky day! But when we got inside, it looked a lot like my office, only less nice and with lots of televisions on everywhere. Where did the magic go? I don't want to know that my local anchorman is cracking jokes to himself because no one is operating the camera. I don't want to know that on the other side of my television screen is a disgruntled, unshaved tech-guy who sits in front of hundreds of switches for hours on end, choosing which images to display. It's just too weird. I do, however, like to know that my brother-in-law sat outside some guy's house in Idaho for three hours in a van with tinted windows, waiting to get a story - now that is magical. From now on I want to know as little about TV as possible. In fact, I don't really want to watch it at all, unless it's the Laguna Beach marathon or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy extravaganza. For those I will make an exception, but I definitely don't want to visit the set and find out that Carson is actually manly and straight and making jokes about hitting-it. Ignorance is bliss.