Timing may not be everything, but it plays a really big part

Posted
Updated:

There’s an old line about selling real estate that says the three most important things about it are “location, location and location.” I always thought price had something to do with the deal, as well — but then maybe that’s why I’m not in the real estate business.

Likewise, there’s an old saying that says a great deal about life in general and some specific things like airplane aerobatics (as the Thunderbirds fly around and cross in front of each other and fly upside down, and so forth). That’s the old saw, “Timing is everything,” and in many ways it’s hard to argue with that line of thought.

Think back on your life and consider how some things happened and where you happened to be when they did and why or how you were there instead of somewhere else. What if you hadn’t walked into the drugstore and seen your sweet patootie sitting there at the counter and had her steal your heart? What if you’d taken the job with Apple computers some years ago instead of selling pots and pans from the trunk of your car? Or what if you’d really paid attention in class instead of doodling on the cover of your notebook?

Timing plays really important parts in the really important parts of our lives, to be sure. But timing is also a funny — not funny “haha,” but funny in how it happens as part of our ordinary lives as well. And lately I’ve noticed a couple of what I guess are insignificant characteristics of time but which also seem to rear their heads more and more.

Both of them have to do with television and its programming. Let me go ahead and admit that to me today’s programming, at least on the major networks, falls somewhere between lousy and the bottom of the sea. Comedy isn’t funny; the laugh tracks prompt us to laugh at juvenile humor about potty humor and body parts. Drama is overdone and most of it has to do with folks shooting other folks and looking for CSI and DNA.

And so much of the “news” is really editorializing and then so much of what isn’t someone’s opinion is graphic description about things like how a young child is dismembered and so forth. Maybe I never set the woods on fire as a journalist but I knew enough to know you don’t air all the dirty linen in public and you try to have some sense of common courtesy and decency. Every time I hear a TV talking head say something like “exclusive on Channel 14!” or whatever I wonder what do they think is really important here — that they’re bringing us a significant story or that they’re tooting their own horn.

Anyway, having said all that I’ll admit that I still do like to watch the “news” but sometimes when a story has just gone off in which a reporter or anchor was lovingly gushing or blowing smoke about someone or something and a commercial has just begun, I’ll switch the channel and guess what: there’s a commercial there, as well. Do television programmers have a written or unwritten rule that says they all must show commercials at the exact same time or is it just me?

And while I’m on a tirade about that, let me go ahead and note the second thing about TV and timing and that is that many of the products being advertised are for wants and needs that somehow don’t seem too well suited for either the supper hour or mixed company of little folks.

Are you constipated? Check out the 6:30 news. Are you looking for two bathtubs you and your mate can lounge in on the back deck or by the shore or in the woods? Wait a few minutes past the commercial for the material that will keep you regular and you can catch that one as well.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think I’m a prude but I don’t think you have to ... well, I think you get the picture. And I’m not against products being made and sold. I’m a big fan of the free enterprise system. That’s one of the soapboxes I get on more frequently now than I once did.

Basically, I want my government — from the courthouse to the statehouse to the White House — to let me and my fellow Americans work as hard as we can and take the chances we want so we can make all we can. But that’s another story for another day.

I just wish there was a little more, shall we say, “decorum” and a little less blunt. Maybe I’ll see if the timing is right for me to go into the TV programming business.

Bob Wachs is a native of Chatham County and retired long-time managing editor of the Chatham News/Chatham Record, having written a weekly column for more than 30 years. During most of his time with the newspapers, he was also a bi-vocational pastor and today serves Bear Creek Baptist Church for the second time as pastor.