"I don't believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duct tape"

The only television in our house is upstairs in the boys’ bedroom, so that’s where we watched the finale of LOST. We fought for good spots to sit: the six of us, plus Blonde Niece and Sailor Boy. It’s an upstairs room, and it was ridiculously hot, especially with all of our warm bodies wedged in amongst the piles of pillows and blankets. If any of us had thought about it ahead of time, we could have carried the television down into the living room — it’s a pretty small television that is easy to lift. But we aren’t the kind of family that plans ahead of time.

So we spent six hours in a stuffy room that smells like dirty socks and Ultimate jerseys. Yes, six hours. We watched the pre-show, the post-show, and of course, the whole episode. It was like a year’s worth of television-watching for me.

Believe it or not, I actually had seen most of the series. We watched it during one of my husband’s kidney stone episodes when he was in pain, and we were just hanging out at home, trying to keep him hydrated, and we needed something to entertain ourselves with. We watched the first three seasons on DVD, all the episodes in a row, with no commercial breaks. I missed some of the details because I’d dash out of the room to get more drinks or food or whatever, but I got the gist of the show. It was a bit dark for my taste – and kind of confusing — and a bit surreal, because we watched it late at night, and the man next me in real life was in as much pain as whichever character was writhing in pain on the screen.

I liked the character development and I liked the theme of redemption that ran through the various subplots. Any intellectual appreciation I had for the show came mostly from listening to conversations between my daughter and Film Guy. Film Guy was getting a degree in Television-Radio-Film during the first four years of the show, so he always had these insightful and intelligent things to say.

So that’s where I was at the historic ending of the series LOST, crowded in the boys’ hot, humid bedroom, with all of my kids and my husband and a couple of extras. The boys have a little fan in the window, because With-a-Why likes to sleep with a fan blasting air at him. But everyone kept complaining that the fan made too much noise so we only used it during commercials. I know some people complained about all the commercials, but I looked forward to them. As soon as a commercial came on, Boy in Black would reach over to plug the fan back in, cool air would pour into the room, and everyone would start talking at once, analyzing what had happened or mocking out the characters they didn’t like. The funniest lines, and the most profound, didn’t come from any character on the screen but from people in the room. That’s always the best part of any television show.