Sweet freedom: life without TV

I plan to limit my kids TV, but he can go nuts on the video games. Hand-eye coordination, problem-solving skills, those things are fantastic little training totals.

 

I would, quite literally, die.

 

Watching TV on a little tiny computer screen fucking sucks. I spent a lot of money on my HDTV and I am not ashamed of the fact that I like to watch TV.

 

Some?

 

Funny thing is, I was a kid in the 1960s and early 1970s, when the "TV-as-babysitter" phenomenon was at its peak. The TV was on 24/7 in our house (well actually more like 19/7 because they signed off at 1 a.m. and on at 6), and this continued for all my four younger siblings.

NONE of us watch TV very much, and my youngest sister's kids hardly ever watch TV, at all. They have a nice new plasma, but it's hardly ever on.

You heard a lot of caterwauling in the 1970s especially from educators that we were raising a nation of TV zombies and maybe we did, but it sure didn't happen in our family.

 

The ZOMG YOU AREN'T EXPERIENCING THE SHOW WITHOUT $5,000 WORTH OF EQUIPMENT! folks aren't always a blast.

 

Agreed. One of my buddies is like that.

"What do you mean you don't have 10 speakers around your apartment to hear the game?"
"Well, I live in a one-bedroom, I can hear the TV pretty well from anywhere in the house."

 

Lil 93 get 45 minutes of Sesame Street almost every day. That and Peanuts DVDs are the only things she is allowed to watch. Basically, it's because we do not want to buy 1,000 different characters for her room.

Funny thing, though, she has no concept of commercials.

 

Little Appgrad is going to be severely limited on TV, although I did pick up a Looney Tunes collections a few months ago on the cheap. I am more concerned that after his mom spent her maternity leave watching "19 Kids and Counting" and "Say Yes to the Dress," he's going to grow up to be a evangelist fashion designer.

 

Yeah, I have a little 24-inch flat-screen that I bought in college for my dorm room. Because I'm a journalist and single, I don't have the cash to go blow on an HD and people make fun of me mercilessly for having a small TV when it's mostly just me and the cat watching it. I'm like...well, if you want to contribute to the Wenders HDTV Fund, you are more than welcome to...I'll warn you, putting gas in my car and feeding myself is of a higher priority right now, though, since my TV works just fine.

And when I have kids, I'll make sure I have the Boomerang network. Best channel on TV. The Flintstones and the Jetsons back-to-back with no commercial interruption. I'm a huge Hannah Barbera cartoon freak.

Oh, and Appgrad, I definitely also have one of those Looney Tunes collections. Great stuff.