The last people on Earth who still use a TV antennae

As I got up off the couch to answer my ringing cell phone earlier this evening, I had an inkling it was Brent just calling to tell me he loved me.

HA! As if.

To my surprise, it was my brother calling from Toledo. Even though my 24-year-old brother and I are close, it's not like he calls me just to talk.

So I was curious to know what he might have to tell me.

"Hi Cal!" I said.

"Hey Erika," he replied. "I just wanted to let you know that today is a momentous occasion in the Ray household." (He's referring to my parents' house.)

"ARE YOU GUYS GETTING CABLE RIGHT NOW!?!?!?" I shouted, mostly because I couldn't think of anything that could be more momentous than that.

"Yes," he replied simply. With that one single word, he confirmed what may be the most significant technological advance that my parents have ever undertaken. Before today, they were the last people in the world who have not jumped on the cable bandwagon.

And I think that's ironic. I know I wasn't even a teenager when my dad introduced me to that newfangled thing called "the Internet." Most of my preteen and teenage years were spent as "OVERRIDE25" in chat rooms or instant messaging random people claiming they were "16/m/Ohio" or "15/m/Michigan." (I chose the moniker "OVERRIDE" after the cool computer hacker chick in the not-so-popular 1995 movie "Hackers.")

My dad has always been technologically savvy and has always had a great fascination with newfangled gadgets. It seems like he updates his computer monitor every year to go with his system that has all the bells and whistles, and once passed down his relatively new camera to me when he got an even newer one.

However, it's important to note that while the computer system is nearly as new as it gets, it's still a dial-up. For those of you who don't remember 1990, that means that one can use either the computer OR the phone, but not both at once because they use the same line. That also means that if you want to download a file, you should click the "download" button in the evening, then go to sleep for the night, and hope that it's finished downloading when you wake up in the morning.

But when it comes to cell phones and the TV, they live ridiculously like it's 1985. Though they were one of the first people I knew of to get a cell phone, they also had THAT EXACT CELL PHONE until about a year ago. I could never understand how people kept a straight face when my mom actually pulled out their cell phone - which had a whopping 30-minute-a-month cell phone plan - and attempted to use it. It was as big as a standard-sized flashlight with a battery almost as big and didn't hold a charge for more than a few minutes at a time. And they never had it on or with them, which made it useless.

And now that they have cell phones with plans that allow them to call long-distance for free, they got rid of that feature on the regular phone. So if my mom or dad have to call anywhere but their own town or maybe the next town over, they have to use their cell phones because their regular phone won't work.

Luckily, my mom updated their cell phone and actually keeps it with her, and my dad adopted my old cell phone a few months ago.

But the poor TV has been neglected for years. The most that's ever been done when it comes to the TV is that it's actually in color. Channels 11, 13, and 36 came in relatively well, but whenever my parents or siblings and I wanted to watch one of the other two channels that came in OK - 24 or 50 or if we were really lucky, one of the nearby Detroit channels - one of us had to go downstairs to adjust the antennae via a control pad. So one of us was downstairs turning the antennae while someone else was upstairs watching the channel we wanted to watch, saying, "It's still fuzzy. Turn it a little more... a little more... TOO MUCH! Change it back."

R-I-D-I-C-U-L-O-U-S!

So as you can see, today IS historic for my parents. FINALLY! They will get to watch QUALITY programs, such as "Paris Hilton's My New BFF," "The Hills," and "The Girls Next Door" instead of the boring, same-old, same-old shows such as "60 Minutes" or the local news.