DON'T DO THAT, or you'll go BLIND!!!

Jack knocked me for a loop down memory lane the other day with THIS question: "Papa Mike, how come we can touch YOUR TV screen but we can't at home?"
The loop was because it was a revelation to me that he thought touching MY television screen is not only an acceptable habit but also nigh onto a laudable endeavor.
I mean, I don't mind it, because it's an old model with the hard glass tube. But the fact that he assumed he could, and presumed to act on that assumption, touch the screen explained the mischievous fingerprints I had been attributing to leprechauns or, perhaps cockroaches wearing fake fingerprint gloves.
So I explained to the lad of 5 that modern-day TV screens are delicate and must not be handled, even with kid gloves. Back in the day, they were strong enough to fend off even a bouncing tennis ball, as I recall. The common ground: TV screens then and now could not tolerate, say, a bowling ball.
But the time warp to the first TV conjured up the memories I have related previously about watching the headdressed Indian test pattern, in black and white, for WEEKS on my granddad's TV. It was the first one in South Sioux City, Neb., but it and its rabbit ears were primed for the signal when the first Sioux City, Iowa, TV station went live.

It's hard to explain to kids these days that the only way to have an "entertainment center" back then was to put a record player on top of a console TV, and a radio on top of the record player, and make sure the wall socket could tolerate all the plugs. Each appliance had its own speakers, and none woofed or tweeted so much as scratched. Oh, if you wanted a phone, too, the best you could do was have a party-line, rotary-dialed one.
Even showing the grandkids the little battery-operated TV I bought for hurricanes doesn't convey the true barbarity of those days of yore. (Even that TV is obsolete, with the switch to digital, I think, if that's done, and I'm not sure.)
So they'll never see how far devices can morph, from big tubes and boxes, black and white, to consoles, to portables, etc., to screens so small you can hold 'em with two fingers.
Black and white, consoles, portables, etc.
Back to the screens It appears that one of the main admonitions from when granddad was a lad was the warning not to sit too close to the TV. These days, the boys sometimes stand just a few feet from the set.
Back then, parents forever were yelling, "Don't sit so close to the TV or you'll go BLIND."
Of course, blindness was a common consequence preached when guilting us didn't quite work. In the old days, it usually was an admonition not to touch THIS, THAT, or the OTHER thing.
Often, touching had those dire physical consequences of blindness:
* Don't play with that bow and arrow or you'll shoot somebody's eye out.
* Or, put that cork gun away before you blind somebody.
* Or, don't . . . or you'll go blind. (If you catch my drift. Surprising more of my generation isn’t blind.)
Actually, I don't mind the boys' leaving fingerprints around the house because I figure it reminds me that their spirits are lingering there even when they aren't visiting.
So there aren't many things I don't tell 'em not to touch. Well, except for the plant that Jack feels the need to whack every time he walks past it.
“Why, Papa Mike?” he’ll say every time. “It’s fake, isn’t it?”
“NO,” I remind him about my favorite orchid plant, every time. “It’s REAL, and it’s DELICATE.”
To conclude, I’ll add that ... Uh. ... OMG! I can’t see the screen!!!! Ye GADS! I think I’m going BLIND! But I didn’t ... I SWEAR!!!