The Big Bang Theory & COVID-19

We are living in crazy times. The last time I decided to purchase full seasons of The Big Bang Theory was when I was nine months into my year of teaching English as a Foreign Language (ESL) in a rural city of Icheon-si in South Korea. My apartment wifi or internet connection was not fast enough or was not working, and I remember I had to go to the coffeehouse and take advantage of their free wifi for the download onto my iPad mini. It took forever and I pretended to do work while I browsed Facebook and took selfies in between watching the ticker bar of the download. I do not remember why I opted to get two seasons of the show (maybe I really decided to treat myself) but I do remember the triumphant feeling when the download was complete.

From then on, The Big Bang Theory has played. It helped me get through those last three and half months of Korea, which were trying, wonderful, filled with happy moments as well as deeply sad ones. It has been there in the background ever since, playing in the early morning as I make my coffee and get ready for the various jobs I had had since, including to this day for a job I love. I sometimes fall asleep to the familiar punch lines and canned audience laughter. Familiar, home comfort, television companionship.

When COVID-19 hit, I decided after six years of watching the same two seasons over and over to download the next one. It is interesting to me that now is when I would decide to input a new credit card into my iTunes on that same iPad mini from Korea. I do not attribute all of it to COVID-19 and the horror this infectious disease has brought onto literally everyone in the world or that my experience in South Korea is anything like our lives with COVID-19. It is just interesting because I am a somewhat frugal person - perhaps it simply highlights how life's small pleasures contribute to the ability to stay calm and be pop happy. And is not that how to fuggin adult.