Channel Snow
Kids raised during purely digital eras don't and can't understand the visceral reaction to channel snow and static that affects their elders.
It wasn't just the sound, or the image, or the absence of what "should" be on the channel. There was both a feeling of abandonment and a feeling that you should not be awake and out of your room. Bed time was serious business. Better not wake Mommy or Daddy. Oh, no. When the channel static was playing, you were well past bedtime. And it was so much darker when that was your only light. The flicker from the screen made everything ghostly. And your young brain tried and tried to see images in the static. As for my autistic ass, the first few times I saw that TV snow, it was a sensory agony that made my brain itself itch. I tried to see hidden pictures too. I was sure that of I could look just right, I'd see something secret. It didn't help things that I'd also be the designated channel changer and antenna adjuster, as the youngest kid. You digital kids will never know that experience. Not making judgements mind you. Please understand I'm not saying that you are less than us analog types because of when you were born. That's some Boomer shit and I won't play that. I had a recurring nightmare, you know? Waking up to the static. Walking to the living room to see why nobody was turning it off or something. My parents, my uncle and aunt, they're all sitting there, motionless in front of the TV. I know without any doubt they are dead. I imagine I can see their throats are cut, but all I actually see are their backs. I freeze. Sometimes my dad turns to look at me and yells at me to go back to bed. Sometimes he invites me to watch the secret show. Sometimes I know they're the undead and if they find out I know this, I'm a goner. But that same central image haunted me. The noise and the light from the TV. My silent and motionless family. Me, too small and too scared. People say the dead can communicate tonus through the white noise. That's silly, though, right? How could a ghost talk within the noise? In that flickering light? There's no way, is there? Is there? Hey, answer me! I see you messing with your TV! There's no way I'm a ghost! You aren't either! There's got to be another explanation! I can't be dead!
