Arlene Jones

I am a natural-born procrastinator. Putting off what I should do today for tomorrow is my modus operandi. It is a habit I have to actively and intentionally overcome. My downfall is not the television, but this darn smartphone that brings everything I like to do to my fingertips. I don’t need a 65-inch TV to watch movies. I have become perfectly content with the tiny screen. I have watched 10 years of a television series on it without a hitch.

Growing up, my exposure to the outside world came via film. Be it television or the movies, that is how I learned about life outside of my immediate reality. It wasn’t until I was grown that I learned movies were more fantasy than reality. Everybody in California was not like Gidget — living at the beach and surfing. Not every white person had a house like “The Beaver” with a mom in a shirtwaist dress and pearls.

When Meghan Markle (“MM”) first married Prince Harry (“H”), I too was like the rest of the world. We were in awe that a 1,000-year-old monarchy, which at one time was the biggest supporter of slavery, had progressed to the point that a descendant of an enslaved African could become a member of it. After the wedding, MM was never really on my immediate radar until she did the Oprah Winfrey interview (an interview, by the way, that has literally been scrubbed off the internet).