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Unplugging the Christensens — We asked these Thrivent Financial members to put down their remotes for a week. Could you do the same?
By Ingrid Case
 It’s one thing to give up television in a city where theaters, museums and festivals abound. It’s quite another thing to give up television in the tiny town of Dubois, Wyoming, where 1,200 residents live 200 miles from the nearest interstate.
In the warmer months, Dubois residents head outside. But when winter sets in, and snowmobiles are tucked away for the night, thoughts turn toward the comforts of home—and that often means playing computer games and watching television.
Of course, the residents of Dubois aren’t the only avid television watchers in the U.S. The average American watches nearly five hours of television every day, a habit that’s credited with health problems, including a rise in obesity and adult-onset diabetes, as well as a dip in the amount of time people spend engaging with their family and friends.
In our techno-centric times, how hard would it be to go unplugged? Thrivent magazine decided to find out. We asked Dubois residents and Thrivent Financial members the Rev. Sam and Judy Christensen to spend a cold winter week without television, non-essential Internet and cell phone use, and computer games. Read on to see how they did—and then ask yourself how you would fare.
A Winter Addiction
Sam, 69, and Judy, 67, took up the challenge in part to see if they could survive a winter week without electronic entertainment. “I think people really do feel addicted to television, and I certainly do in the wintertime,” Judy says. “But we’ve become so disillusioned with the programming. We thought it would be good to see if we can really live without TV.”
The Christensens don’t lack hobbies. The couple plans to retire in September from Mount Calvary Lutheran Church where Sam is the pastor and Judy is the organist. They’re active in community organizations, they read and they play table tennis and cribbage. Sam, an amateur watercolorist, is president of the local arts guild.
Even so, the couple enjoys their television and computer. They fondly remember watching The Dean Martin Show on their first television, which they bought for $125 soon after they were married in 1956. Now approaching their golden anniversary, they watch college football games, the news and House, a program on the Fox network.
The family computer doesn’t gather dust, either. Judy uses it to practice bridge. “I love the challenge,” she says at the onset of their unplugged experiment. “I will have to give that up, and that will be hard.”
Travel and Table Tennis
The first few days of the Christensen’s screen-free week were taken up with medical appointments and travel—the two attended a weekend conference in Fort Collins, Colorado, 440 miles away.
The doctor’s office presented the first challenge: second-hand television. When an employee turned on the TV in the waiting room, Sam went over and turned it down. He didn’t turn it off, he says, because he thought that other patients might be watching it.
Fortunately, avoiding the television in their Fort Collins hotel room wasn’t as tough as they anticipated. They were tired when they arrived, so they did their devotions and went to bed. Another hotel guest channel-surfed at the morning breakfast buffet; the Christensens turned their chairs so they couldn’t see the screen.
When they got home, rather than clicking on the TV, they busied themselves with reading, cribbage, attending board meetings in town, house projects and refreshing their table tennis, which was an unexpected workout. “We found out that we’re out of shape, even though we walk,” Judy says. “In table tennis you have to chase the balls!”
Judy ordered kits to make angel pins for the local senior center craft sale and spent time working on a correspondence course she’s taking in creative writing. Sam did odd jobs around the house that had been on his to-do list for weeks, including rigging a pulley system to store bicycles and canoes in the garage. With the extra time on his hands, he also got to work helping others. One of his six adult sons, for example, benefited from his dad’s unplugged status when Sam came over to organize and sort some of his household goods.
A Change for the Better
Being without television or Internet games, the pair reports, wasn’t as challenging as they expected. They even began to think of getting rid of their satellite dish, a $45 monthly expense. “Now we’re comparing the enjoyment with the cost,” Sam says. “For $45 we can eat out, go to the library, get a DVD, come home and watch something we really want to see.” (The couple might get an antenna so they can at least keep up with local news.)
What about Judy’s love of computer games? Going unplugged for just one week was no sweat, she says, explaining that she kept herself busy doing other things. “But I’m still addicted to computer games, and I realize now that I’m going to have to work on that.”
The Christensens admit that the week wasn’t totally devoid of tech-temptation. Just before the experiment ended, “we fell off the wagon enough to check the TV Guide and see if there was anything we might like to see,” Judy says. A new Law and Order episode looked good, but—refreshingly—little else caught their fancy.
Above all, going unplugged reminded them of how easy it is to be active and busy when they’re not tuned in to the tube. “I think we’ll wean ourselves down to one show a night from our previous four,” Sam says. But the Christensens won’t look at it as programming lost—it will be an active lifestyle and time together gained.
Minneapolis-based writer Ingrid Case is a past contributor to Thrivent magazine.
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