I have gotten into the bad habit of staying up late. Not 11 or 12 at night, but closer to 1:30 or 2. The problem is, I get in from work and want to wind down by watching a little t.v. before I go to bed. Before I know it, I have watched multiple DVRd shows and it is suddenly 2 am.
When we were growing up, watching tv was a revered activity. We were allowed one hour after school on PBS and then I was allowed to watch "Our House" on Sundays at 6 pm and Star Trek: The Next Generation with my parents. I don't remember anything about "Our House" except that it had Brenda from 90210 and the Quaker Oats guy in it. I will get back to the Star Trek issue. I was not allowed to watch cartoons. Each Saturday I would wake up, creep to my parents' door and knock while quickly asking, "Can we watch cartoons today?" I asked every Saturday, somehow thinking that this weekend would be the time that my mom and dad threw all their parenting beliefs out the window. But sometimes, when my parents were so exhausted, it actually did work, and my sister and I would let ourselves fall into the mystical worlds of magical ponies and Care Bears.
We read a lot growing up, which I think is a wonderful thing to instill in your child. I would still prefer to pick up a good novel than to flip through the tv with no idea of what will be on. The thing that we were allowed to do was watch movies. Usually once a week we would head to the local Movie Gallery where the three of us fought over which movie we would rent. I still am not sure why we were not allowed to watch cartoons when we were allowed to rent cartoon movies. But I was reminded of something the other night when I was up watching "Annie" at 2 am. My mother loves old musicals and would bring us "Oliver," "My Fair Lady" or "Annie" and attempt to convince us that this would be more interesting than watching "The Little Mermaid" for the 10th time. If we happened to give in, we would go home to watch a musical. We memorized the songs, and my best friend and I acted some of them out.
The funny thing is, I don't think that my mother's recollection of these movies was as clear as she believed. Have you seen "Oliver" lately? It is about a kidnapped orphan who spends his time in a bar with a whore and a killer. Ok, how about "Annie?" I was shocked the other night to see that the movie ends with Annie almost being pushed off an abandoned bridge! (And Ms. Hannigan is an alcoholic!) When I was younger, I remember thinking it was very odd that Carol Burnett was drinking all of her perfume throughout the movie. All I remembered from theses movies as a child were the songs. "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow..!" And let us not forget that I was allowed to watch Star Trek instead of cartoons. Each of those cast members are armed and dangerous! Destroying planets and space ships were weekly occurrences. Was that better than Mickey Mouse?
I still give my parents a hard time about this. I get it - you don't want the television to be a babysitter, and inspiring creativity through reading is important, but my mom still can't give me an answer as to what was wrong with My Little Pony. On that note, I guess I am going to go read my book.
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