We had very basic TV when I was a child. Until I was 5, we didn't have cable and just had the very basic ABC, NBC, CBS and so on. Our TV was small and one of those tube TVs with the very large back. When we did get cable, our cable box was hooked to the TV and had buttons on the box itself. The buttons weren't regular buttons, rather they were those hard buttons that popped one up when you press down another. (I know I'm not explaining it right! lol) Picture to the right of a similar box to what we had. There were no remote controls to our television back then, we had to get up and change the channel when we wanted to switch it. I remember laying on the living room floor with the cable box in front of me while watching TV. Of course, my mom would yell at me that I was too close to the television and that my eyes were going to get hurt. (Didn't all parents say that?) Even our cable channels were few and far between. I believe we had about 31 cable channels at that time. Even so, that was a huge difference from the 4 or 5 regular local channels we had previously. Yes, even our TV, while hooked up to a cable box, still had an antenna. There was no digital cable back then.
Believe it or not, my two girls are in disbelief when I tell them about this. They either think I'm crazy or that I was born in the days of the cavemen and dinosaurs. This all came about when I made the decision to get rid of DirecTV. The prices were getting outrageous and when I called to lower my bill, they completely gave me the runaround about why they didn't want me to lower the bill. I got so frustrated with them, I asked them to put my account on hold while I tried to find a solution for this. Right now, my kids are watching Netflix through my Wii and I don't mind that at all. The minimal price of Netflix is much better than the pricy satellite service. I think it's perfect because I hardly watch TV. I'm too busy to watch anything and mostly watch Netflix at night or watch shows that I did miss on the computer. I don't really see the need for expensive TV service when we don't really use all of the channels that we have. I feel like it's a waste of my hard earned money.
My girls told me that they can't live without the TV and that actually scared me. Do my kids think that TV is everything? I get them out of the house and they get plenty of exercise, I don't let them sit by the TV constantly and I don't use the TV as a babysitter, but every once in a while when I'm making dinner or my mom is making dinner, they would sit down and watch TV. I really do think it's sad that this generation of children think that TV is so important to them. It made me realize that kids these days take a lot for granted. They don't understand how it was when we were little and they don't want to understand either.
I'm going to have to start limiting TV time and getting my kids to exercise their creative muscles. After all, I'm an artist and I feel that being creative is much more important than watching TV and turning your brains into mush by doing so. I'm going to really start to make my kids realize that there is more to life than watching Wow Wow Wubbzy, Dora the Explorer, Imagination Movers and whatever else they watch. I'll show them that creativity and using your imagination is much more important and much more fun. That's what we had to do when I was little, and I owe that to the reason why I am so creative and artistic today.
