10:51 p.m. | 2005-10-17 The Interweaving Threads Of Life Are Interesting. Back when I was in high school (if you�re young, think waaaay back), MyDad and I watched TV together. We only had six channels or so � which doesn�t seem a difficult thing to manage � but we totally depended on our TV Guide to, um, guide us in our TV viewing experience. Side note� out of all magazines, even TigerBeat, TV Guide was my first crush. I�m not surprised since it�s always been a sort of dayplanner. All that crisp and refined scheduling appealed to my sensibilities. My TV time was quite restricted back then, due to all the homework, chores and outside time I had to attend to. This guide was instrumental in ensuring that I made the most of my 1 to 2 hours of TV time a day. Really, you have to plan all that to make it good. Especially when you only have a few channels. Anyway, I remember when TV Guide started to switch up their format back in the late �70�s early �80�s when they started to incorporate the grid. I remember because MyDad loved the grid. I hated it. I liked the listings. I refused to even look at the grid. All while MyDad exclaimed its virtues. That was when I was in high school. I lived with MyDad then. However, once I was 17 and had graduated from high school, he left the country to start a new life. And, I was left to start my own new life. The TV Guide� its daily presence intertwined with MyDad and our time together was quite suddenly gone. Life went on of course. And, I worked for many years before I could afford to subscribe to the Guide on my own. I didn�t know then just how much that simple little publication was linked to so many things. I was thrilled when I could finally afford to subscribe to TV Guide. I was strung a lot tighter back then and really, really liked the tight, regimented schedule set out in those pages. So, I sent off my order form with my payment. I was so excited I never really looked at the solicitation letter. I did the notice the letter the next year though. In particular, I noticed the name of the person who signed it. It stopped me in my tracks. I felt a sudden chill and impending nausea. It was signed, seemingly, by the person who�d raped me as a youngster. A name I could never ever remember, as much as I tried, until I saw it. I was mad, very mad at the TV Guide. Just for the record, the name is quite common and the TV Guide person is certainly not the person who raped me. But it was shocking that this little magazine, that I loved and that was something special I shared with MyDad, was soiled by this name. Of course, I refused to continue to give one iota of my life to the person who did rape me hence, I�ve continued the subscription for more than two decades notwithstanding the fact that I see that same name year after year. And over the years, I�ve noticed that the grid has become more common. I ignore it as much as I can but have found that I can�t avoid it. It inevitably reminds me of My Dad and our TV watching. It�s a good memory. Alas, TV Guide has been revamped. No more listings. It�s now a fan magazine with several pages of grids to guide my TV watching. My Dad would be so proud. See, one of our long-standing debates was about whether listings or grids were better. We didn�t resolve that argument during his lifetime, obviously. He was right though. Not that it�s better, just that it won out in the end. If he was here, I�d high-five on that one. Hell, he made that call in 1980. Either he was a TV Guide visionary or we just lived in a really small town. Or both. your thoughts? seed flower