This morning, Big D got up and went to turn on the TV, like he normally does. But this was not like any ordinary morning.

The picture suddenly broke into horizontal lines with black lines between them. Slowly, the lines of picture got thinner and the lines of black got thicker. And then, the unthinkable…the picture went totally black.

He turned it off and on, but the picture was gone.

Our TV is dead.

It was a good TV. It was 32 inches. It even had AV jacks in the front for convenience. It served us well for about ten years. We spent time with it every day. It was a reliable and fun companion to us all.

We mourn the loss.

For the most part, Not-So-Crafty Daddy and I will not miss it. He only watches “Smallville,” which we watch together, and I watch “Desperate Housewives” on Sundays, but anything else we watch is sporadic. Besides, we have a 13-incher in our room we can use. I already said I would start watching DH in there, so he can play Jedi Academy on the computer out in the family room, while I watch it. (I can’t watch TV with the mouse and keyboard noise in the background.)

The kids, however, have been walking around in circles today trying to figure out what to do. And they are driving us nuts. If it wasn’t for the fact that we had church and they had a soccer game, I think I would have lost it by now.

Not-So-Crafty Daddy said he read in a John Rosemond book that after a week or so of no TV, they will find their imaginations again. We both have felt like they watch way too much TV lately, anyway. And the fact that I was willing to watch “Wife Swap” last week because “7th Heaven” wasn’t on (it moved to Sundays) is a bad sign.

So, we decided not to buy a new TV and see how that works out for a while.

It promises to be an interesting experiment.