I was 15 years old. My father got a television set somewhere and set it on a table in the corner of our living room. The day Channel 2 turned on their signal, we had a fuzzy picture on a round green screen. It was probably a used Dumont television set.

Now, approximately 55 years later, I still, along with approximately twenty million other people, get my television signal from an aerial connected to the set. This will continue until February 17, 2009. I plan to be watching whatever is on TV when the picture shuts down.

I was there at the beginning. I'll be there at the end.

I may be able to get a converter box which will give me the same signal I'm getting, by converting digital to analog, for the cost of fifty plus dollars. No thanks. I can also get cable and pay monthly to watch Dynasty, Get Smart, and more of the same.

The industry has less than eight months to hook every one up before things go black. Eight months might be enough to accommodate five million people but, from my perspective, somewhere around fifteen million people are going to go black along with me.

Right now, I have a television, VCR, DVD, and an RF modulator all plugged into two sockets. I don't have anywhere else to plug a converter box and I don't have the time to figure out where between the rabbit ears and the television set that I can splice it in and make the picture work. From the vague instructions coming at me from every direction, most other people are not sure either.

Somewhere in the distant future, if I can locate a digital set with a LCD screen that works as well on an indoor aerial as my old one does, I might be tempted to buy it. In the meantime, I hope the government enjoys the tons of money they are making off leasing their oodles of extra bandwidth they'll have as it shrinks down from analog to digital. No wonder they'll give a forty dollar ticket for a trinket that stores are not even interested in stocking.