We each have an internal antenna.

I use mine to receive messages from my home planet.

I keep my antenna finely tuned by reading newspapers, books and magazines.

I read that Regina Lark, a professional organizer, but not a professional union organizer, said that the average U.S. household has 300,000 items from paper clips to ironing boards.

No wonder we have trouble finding things. An insurance company survey found that the average American spends 3,680 hours (153 days) of his or her life looking for misplaced items.

It’s no wonder. There are more TVs than people, two-car garages have difficulty making room for two cars and storage facilities are proliferating.

Years ago, my wife and I stayed in a cabin in the north woods. It had no electricity. If heat was needed, a fireplace and wood were available. There were lamps and candles for light, but the summer days were long. There were few items in that cabin. They’d been replaced by the quiet. It was wonderful.

The exterior of that cabin had a strange look. It had no TV antenna at a time when TV antennas were ubiquitous. Motorhomes and turtle shells had them.

TV sets came with rabbit ears, but serious watchers found room on their roofs for the spindly-armed, branched, directional antennas.

I grew up in a time when TVs were in color. The colors were black and white. Once a year, we’d find the time and the place to watch “The Wizard of Oz.” Dorothy was transported from Kansas to Oz. Judy Garland, who played Dorothy, was born in Minnesota, so we went with her. If the Wizard could have granted my wish, I’d have asked to see the movie again. It was an amazing film. Why? It had flying monkeys. I don’t think I need to say more.

In my boyhood, none of our TVs had more than rabbit ears. They were wrapped in tinfoil or connected to coat hangers in the hopes of improving the picture quality. Needle-nose pliers replaced broken channel tuners. TV wasn’t a 24-hour affair. It spent time off the air and the screen held a test pattern, a geometric design that identified the station and allowed for an adjustment of the screen’s image by the use of mysterious and ineffective controls on the back of the TV.

Years later, I bought my parents an outside antenna. It was a big deal at the time because it allowed them to get Twin Cities stations that were beamed from another universe.

My wife and I have led a cable-free existence thanks to cable TV never being available to us.

We bought a house with an antenna atop a tall tower running up one end of the dwelling.

That was plenty good for the likes of us, but a relative began selling satellite dishes the size of Buick LeSabres. A friend purchased one and invited us to have a look. It was cool in an uncool way. Nearly 43 percent of product sales in this country are made because we have to buy from a relative. So we became owners of a satellite dish.

There were many channels, but if I stared at them long enough, I lost interest. A Microsoft survey concluded that the average attention span is eight seconds, down from 12 seconds in 2000. The study found that we have shorter attention spans than goldfish. I didn’t need a big dish to help me watch things in 12-second increments, so I stopped watching. I scrapped the big dish. A friend began selling the tiny dishes that are typically mounted on a roof. Nearly 43 percent of product sales in this country are made because we have to buy from a friend. We grew weary of the small dish and ceased our satellite TV subscription.

I called an antenna guy because the long neglected antenna had stopped working.

“Why do you want to fix it?” he said as he looked up at the tower.

“I don’t,” I replied. “I want to watch the high school basketball tournament.”

“Well, I’m not going up there. I fell off a roof a month ago and I’m not quite healed yet, but if you’ll go up there, I can call you on your cellphone and tell you what to do,” he verbally colored outside the lines.

It had the makings of a Hallmark card, but I stayed on the ground. So did he.

When it comes to our TV antenna, I expect nothing, but I hope for the best.