Mr. Dash's recent "Facts of Life" story has inspired me to share this. My mom believed in family time. Her idea of family time was to sit and watch TV together. I grew up on all the old shows, I can practically quote from any given sitcom or drama in the 80's (predominately CBS because we only got 3 stations and it was the clearest.) Facts of Life, Family Ties, the Cosby show, Dallas, Falcon Crest, Silver Spoons, HEE HAW, Different Strokes, 227, The Jeffersons, Alice....Okay so some of them were reruns, these are just some of the shows I've watched countless episodes if not entire series of.
However, I am getting side tracked. Family Time. My mom would insist on us having this every evening. I would try to rebel---"Mom, that show is stupid." (Matlock, yuk.) (Murder she wrote?---don't get me started.) She would give me an out for these once in a while, I usually tried to have homework to do on nights that had the above mentioned shows on.
While I LOVE the idea of Family Time and did appreciate the concept. I always thought it was a little crazy how we did it:
First of all, there were times (the above mentioned shows) that mom was the only one who wanted to watch it.
Second. I can tell you right now, that I have yet at 2 days shy of 32 to sit through a whole TV show with my mom. Yes, she wanted us in their all "watching." But she would then get up and pop popcorn, or dish out ice cream, then get up again to wash the bowls. Then she would be off getting dad's coffee ready to "perk" the next morning, or fold the load of laundry she put in the dryer before dinner. She never stopped, except to eat the popcorn or ice cream, before being off to the next item on her list.
Third, I seemed to the only one in the family to recognize that we weren't actually doing anything together! No talking went on during the shows. No game play. Just zombie out for a while and then off to bed.
I am glad that my mom wanted it to be fun. She wanted it to be Zombie time. She wanted me to be a kid and enjoy life---but understand responsibility. She actually was trying to help me be balanced. She did the things she did out of love. While I didn't always understand or appreciate it then. I finally get it now. Kudos to my mom for loving me so much and for putting up with me as a child who just didn't get it always.
3 comments:
Probably explains why you are gungho on family "activities" as well as table games. Which I think is GREAT! That's what we did as a family and we didn't really miss not having a TV. We also always had a book in the reading. Mom would take the book in the car and read to us. This started on trips, but then it was at bedtime..."just one more chapter, Mom?" And, eventually ANYTIME we were even in the car together. (Which was almost always, because we only had one car too!) Those were good times! Thanks for causing me to remember them!
We were the normal TV series watching family...MASH, All in the Family, Happy Days. Then in 7th grade my folks decided to put TV away. Mom would pick one show we would watch each week. Usually Masterpiece theatre on PBS and mostly it was a 14 part series of a Dickens book. I'm grateful now for two reasons. I know and understand Dickens, even though I've never managed to read much of his stuff. Second and most important, I learned to fill my evenings with more variety than TV alone. A lesson that's easy to loose sight of sometimes!
I am definately prone to being addicted to television. We always watched tv as a family growing up. I also remember my mom never sitting down for the entire episode. She would also get snacks or decide to rearrange pictures/whatnots.
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