Is your TV Off?
This is national turn off the TV week. Is it? I wouldn’t know. I rarely watch TV, and I tend to make sure my kids avoid it as much as possible. I do think it makes them hyper and irritable. And who wants to be the kill joy to say, “time to turn off the TV now?” The boys always whine about that — so there’s one way to avoid some whining. And really, do I need more kids in my house? I don’t want to take care of Dora, Franklin, or Kim Possible — and what would I do with Stitch? (I am actually, ticked-off with Stitch, because of a recent Stitch “ride” at Disney’s Magic Kingdom — later.) The boys do watch cartoons on Saturday mornings, and we have our family movie night twice a month, but we’re pretty low-key when it comes to TV.
TV steals time. And, I’m already very short on time. And my boys, they have less time than I do. Childhood goes by too fast.
This brings me to my Grandma. She had time to not only collect the hickory nuts from the trees in her woods, but she had time to shell them. Have you ever opened a hickory nut? The shell is so hard you have to use a hammer, or a rock. Once you get inside, it’s tiny in there — lots of nooks and crannies. She had to use a crochet hook to get all the pieces of meat out of the shell. Tedious work. She had bushel baskets of hickory nuts shelled. And she baked pies, and she knitted afghans, and she sat and visited with her 7 grown children and her grand children. Where did she find the time?
I think the real reason I avoid the TV in my house is because I secretly believe it will give me the kind of time schedule my Grandma had. Never once did I see her rush to get a meal on the table — even on hot days in the fall, when she had 15 or more men to feed for dinner (it was really what we call lunch) who were rushing to get back to the fields to harvest crops before the sun went down. She was never in a hurry. Yet, she did so much more in a day than I ever accomplish — and I hurry.
I miss the rhythm of her life. I miss the echo of the silence in her house. The refrigerator humming; I could hear the sunbeams hit the furniture in the afternoon. And she had so many growing living plants in her living room, I could smell the dirt. (It was a clean earthy smell — oh yeah, she baked her dirt too — to kill diseases that might hurt her flowers.)
So, I must admit, that despite my efforts to keep the TV’s 30-minute time schedule out of our home, I am far from being as unhurried as my Grandma. But for now, the TV’s silence is my reminder of Grandma’s rhythm. I rush too much.
Related posts:
I agree with your idea that tv is a waste of time. I think its the biggest waste of time invented, next to the internet. Once you realize that the tv is really a tool for advertising, you will see how it affects your life. Who wants to sit through 20 min of commercials every hour? Apperently most of the general population. Who wants to be programmed by companies to go out and consume while the earth is basically dying by our excess? We all don’t but thats what is happening. Don’t forget that we all have a biological computer in our heads that we constantly let advertizers program at will. Bad thing about that is it would take YEARS to un-program even the most willing of individuals.
Television isn’t the time waster here, it’s the computer for me and the game system for the boys. The “biggest boy” (aka my hubby) likes his computer a lot too. I want to turn these off, but like you said, who wants to be the bad guy. But I think it is going to be me, saying it at least to the boys.
Passive entertainment is really a time eater. I, too, remember grandmas who did so much and time seemed to move at a much more manageable pace. Still I remember being parked at their houses in the evening with Lawrence Welk, Ed Sullivan, Dean Martin. That was good TV!
Thank you for visiting me! You have a lovely blog! I so enjoyed your I Am From post… just lovely.
We cut out TV in our house right after the last election… so we only watch DVD’s of films we want to watch. A little diversion is okay every now and then, I think.
I never grew up with any grandmas so I actually don’t know how they were, but I know that our lives now are not as theirs were back then… it all seemed so much simpler back then, less distracting… it’s all about distraction…
This. Yes, this. It’s why I love to visit you. Thank you for bringing to mind the memories of the rhythms of my younger days. Sigh. Grandmommy’s house.
Ack we watch too much TV. My older one watches too much TV which we are trying so hard to curb right now by entertaining him with outdoor activities, summer workshops and the like. I am sure I would not want my younger one to develop the same habit.
I’m not that old yet, but I remember when I was younger, we never had cable which meant only 3 or 4 channels, so I was never really used to watching TV and I used to stay entertained by my grandma who would teach me about her coffebean harvesting or her tomato garden and I sure did enjoy that.