For the next three hours, I watched on TV as a SWAT team scoured the building, armed with rifles.
From an apartment in Biloxi, Miss., I watched on TV as Los Angeles burned, rioted and turned itself inside out on April 29 , 1992
A couple of days after the 2010 earthquake, I watched on TV as a news crew hurried down the street in Port au Prince.
I watched on with Nikos Tsimpidas, the final journalist to be escorted out of the ERT building by riot police last week.
When Leicester City stunned the world and rose through the ranks to win the Premier League last year, beating 5000-1 odds, I watched on with cynicism.
I watched on, mesmerised, as a woman from SBS created endless Boomerang videos of herself twirling in an evening gown in front of a giant gold Logie statue.
I was too far away to see anything but a white speck on the red velvet of his chair, so I watched on one of the giant television monitors that dotted the square.
But I always knew we were a different kind of family from the ones I watched on a nightly basis, because nobody on "Full House" ever got in trouble for kissing a boy, as my sister once did.
(Actually, I can--and did -- count them. Total tally: 24 shows, not counting the ones I watched on DVD after they'd been canceled).
I was in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, for the past two weeks so I unfortunately missed the chance of catching any of the Games live, but I made sure I watched on every TV at my disposal and I wasn't the only one.
