I put up with this show for seven years. Including more than one season (like 2 and 3) when I wondered why I bothered with this random, uneven, inexplicable, frustrating show.

“Lost.” I remember watching the debut episode, with the plane crash and the survivors on some strange beach … and liking the whole concept. I guess I should have, because if I’ve read this correctly, that was the most expensive debut in TV history, to make.

Anyway, seven years of polar bears and smoke monsters and time travel and a cast of characters about a mile long … it’s over.

But I haven’t seen it yet. And it is becoming a chore to keep from finding out what happened. So don’t even try to tell me. Shush! Shhhhh! I have my ears covered.

We are on the other side of the world, of course. So it’s not as if we can flip on the TV (and we have one in the room; it’s just not hooked up) and watch the final 2.5 hours.

What we do is watch streaming video a day or five later.

Since this was a big event that TV-ophiles have been talking about for … ever … we are trying hard to see it asap.

Like late Monday night in Abu Dhabi, our first stretch of 2.5 hours when one of us wasn’t working.

So, the thing takes forever to download, and off we go.

After, mind, a whole day of not looking at newspapers, not looking at wire service reports, not looking at entertainment blogs, not looking at Facebook (Leah, not me) and not talking to friends or relatives back home.

Locke finds Desmond. Ben gets hit in the mouth by Sawyer. Hurley kidnaps Charlie. Richard and the “I see Dead People” guy pluck Lapitas out of the water. Locke and Jack lower Desmond into the hole, and he unplugs the light and the island starts to fall apart …

And our download ended. Half the episode. Maybe a bit more. But that’s all we have. Bang. That’s all we’ve got.

By then, it’s 3 a.m.  We begin to download other slugs that contain the whole show or, at least, the second half/remainder.

And now we go back into radio silence, into the Fortress of Solitude, to make sure we don’t find out how the thing ends.

Not that we expect tidy resolution. Not even. We assume we will be annoyed. But we still want to see what they do with it. Does Tony get whacked or not?

If we lived in California, trying to more than a few hours without knowing would be really, really hard. But in Abu Dhabi, we are surrounded by south Asians, Arabs and Filipinos who don’t know and don’t care. And Brits, too. (Some Canadians care, but we’ve told them to steer clear.)

If this thing doesn’t come up by tomorrow, we’re going to have a problem. And we may have to start reading those recap-analysis pieces on the New York Times. Etc.

But for now … “I can’t hear you! I’m not listening!”