I wasted an hour of my life last night - a precious hour that I will never be able to get back. I watched an hour of "Extreme Home Makeover" and I regret it.
Back in "younger days" you couldn't hardly pry me away from the TV. Now, I hardly ever take the time to sit down in the family room and watch a show. Sure, up until six weeks ago, I would watch the day's episode of my beloved "All My Children", but other than watching shows that came on at 10:00 when I go to bed, (I lay in bed or on the floor in my room and watch certain shows that come on at 10:00) I don't watch much TV. There's just other things I would rather or need to be doing.
Last night, I was laying on the bed working on my security consulting stuff, and decided to turn the TV on for some background noise. "Extreme Home Makeover" was on and I was suckered in an watched it for an hour. And I wish I hadn't. For an hour, I laid there on the bed just watching the show and not even multitasking on business work. And the more I watched, the more it bothered me.
Sure, the moral of the show is very good - building a very expensive and huge house for a needy and deserving family. But last night's show bothered me. I hesitate to express my opinion on this but this is my blog and I can say what I want.
The show was about an Iraq War veteran who had a severe case of PTSD. It was so bad that he couldn't even be around people talking loud, because noise would freak him out and make him have an episode. But the Exteme Home Makeover crew got a huge piece of land away from anybody else and built the family a humongous house. They even made a "quiet room" in the house for the guy - with walls that were five feet thick and made of concrete.
I was happy for the family and especially for this veteran, but then it bother me. For the past couple of weeks I've been reading an e-book that is filled with stories of our "wounded warriors" - veterans from the current wars who were almost killed and how they and their families were just trying to survive. Their wives have had to put their lives basically on hold to help care for their husbands - most of whom had lost arms and legs and suffered severe burns. I started thinking of how many of the wounded veterans that could have benefited from the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on that new big house. I'm not saying that the vet on the show last night with PTSD didn't deserve help; that's not it at all. I just thought of how many additional vets that could have been helped with a portion of the money spent on that extreme makeover.
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