Interview with my Grandfather – Grikor Shalvardzhyan

Grikor Shalvardzhyan, the father of 3 daughters, sits at home awaiting his wife’s return. Listening to the television as background music he seats himself on the couch and leans on the armrest. He sits wondering when something interesting will happen in his life, or on the television. When Grikor and his wife need a lift usually his children will drive them to the store and back, but when their duty calls Grikor and his wife Srbui have to walk or take the bus. “Walking is good for your health,” Grikor said, “especially since all we do is sit in front of the television all day and get no exercise.” “The main reason people do not do exercise anymore is because of this television which came out around 1950,” Grikor continued.

Before the television came out we would sit around and listen to the radio and wait for the newspapers for any news, well that’s if there was something worth hearing. But then all of a sudden “some weird box showed pictures of what was being said,” that’s what my friends would tell me anyway. So I well decided to save up some money to go buy this “box”. And well that’s what I did. Since I didn’t know what it was called I went to the store and asked the lady about this box and she said “yerevi du uzumes televisor arnes? (You want to buy the television?)” I said, “yes that is what I want” and so she gave it to me. We were very excited that day, especially the children because their young minds never really thought about such things. So we hooked it up and began to watch the first thing that showed up.

The first thing we watched was an Old Russian movie, one of my favorites. Of course I had never seen it before but just merely heard it on the radio. It was amazing to actually see what was going on in the “magical box”. Even though the screen was rather small and you could not tell much of what was going on. This was mainly because it was in black and white.

Unfortunately with this television came dramatic schedule changes. One such change was the fact that I did not put as much effort in my work because I was paying more attention to the television. And well I am a shoemaker and when you make shoes you sort of have to put in all of, well most of your mind on the shoe or its gonna come out like a piece of shit. It will be uncomfortable and have lumps in places and have miss-stitches everywhere. The shoe will not even be the right size for the person who ordered it and you won’t get paid for making it. And well that is a problem because we really need money so I gave up these bad habits and did my work before watching the television.

Well before I changed my habits our daily schedules went something like this. We would wake up and eat breakfast. Then we would send the kids to school. Then we would attempt to work but end up watching television for hours on end until we would have to go to work. That was mainly because either me of my wife would end up looking at the clock. And thus finding out how late it really was. And then we would eat dinner go to bed and wake up the next morning to repeat this process. But that of course was before I settled things and began to watch television after I finished working. Well, umm, the main reason it caused so much change was the fact that it was a completely new thing that no-one had really ever seen such a thing and nearly everyone, not just my family, began to watch this and slack off while working. I even saw some families tossing out their television sets because they got in works way.

I did not throw mines away because the children really liked to watch it when they could not play outside, either because of the weather of because their friends were doing their homework. Besides it was something our whole family could do together. All of us would sit on the couch and watch movies whenever we were all free. The reason it was the only thing we could do together was because adults do not usually go outside and play tag with children or ride bikes. Whenever I think of that it reminds me of my childhood and how I would rather be doing that than be making shoes. And so that’s why we only sit around the television together. To tell you the truth we do play together when we go on picnics. I believe the first television set came out around the 1960’s or something like that. They were not all that good as I may have mentioned before because they were small and well they were in black n’ white. Well we owned our television set for about a year or something close to that. Then we decided we should get rid of it. Well to tell you the truth it wasn’t really our problem. One day I come home and walk to the kitchen to get a glass of water. My daughters come into the kitchen yelling “DADDY, DADDY COME QUICK,” and so I did. The television that had been off the whole day had caught fire out of nowhere. Luckily my daughters had seen it and came to call me or else the house might have caught fire. Everyone was yelling and screaming while dumping water onto the burning television set. Luckily I managed to remove the plug from the wall without getting electrocuted. When we had managed to put the flames out I took the steaming television set and tossed it out of the window. I did not quite trust the appliance anymore so I hesitated when I went to buy the second one. “What if that one goes on fire too and your not they’re to put it out?” Those words constantly rang threw my mind. But I finally managed to overcome my fear and bought the second set with my family pushing and urging me to do it. No, once again luckily it did not go on fire. And I think it would have had my brother not thrown it away about a month after I had bought the stupid hunk of garbage. I did not go to buy a new one after he tossed it away because I had the feeling he would throw the next one away was well.

I liked the second one better then the first because it was not broken haha. Just kidding. The actual reason I liked it better was because it showed the images in color and it was about an inch maybe 2 larger than the first. And besides that I was able to watch movies from different countries as well. Some were not translated but I still had a vague idea of what was going on. At least I thought I did haha. Well some of the languages were Turkish, Russian, Armenian, American, and well some other things that I don’t quite remember and that I could not make out. But I watched them anyway because what was happening was pretty funny. They showed Charley Chaplain a few times and that was the funniest thing around. Luckily it was mainly soundless so I knew I was not missing out on anything. It would have been awesome to have something translate them for me. I mean I would not have had to think I understood it because I would understand it. Having it translated would have pleased the kids more than it would have pleased me. Well I suppose the reason it would have been so nice to have such a thing would be the fact that I would not have to guess what was going on. Seeing what is going on does not explain much. Now that they have these things I sit down and wish I had them back when I was watching French movies in Armenia. I really do think about what my kids would be thinking if I walked home one day and told them about how something could translate their favorite comic shows. You know I really love my daughters. It really is a pity my brother tossed away the television or we just might have found out about these translation things.