Books and TV

We’re a TV loving family. In fact, we love TV so much that a couple of months ago our house almost burned. Why? We left oil burning in a pot and forgot about it. Our kitchen was covered in disgusting, black soot for days and the smoke alarm shrilly rang non-stop. We eventually had to paint the damn kitchen because our arms were about to fall off cleaning it. What were we doing you ask? All of us were transfixed on a cartoon show. Yes, a cartoon. For little children. It was spongeboob, okay!

Anyway, two weeks ago BOTH our TVs burned out somehow [we have 2 in the living room - one for kids and one for grownups because we fight too much lol]. Neither works now and we found it odd that it happened only days after one another. Was it a message from God telling us that we need to focus on living our life rather than watching fake people pretend to live fake lives? I don’t know, but since there is a reason for everything, I’m holding out to my theory.

So…after school and work…what do we do as a family? We were pretty lost for a while. We used to take out food to the living room and spend maybe two hours watching TV together. Now we sit around snarling at each other and picking fights over silly, stupid stuff. It’s getting exhausting. I never knew how much TV brought us together as a family. How are we going to survive without TV? Is it possible? We’re all suffering from withdrawal symptoms; the whole house feels as if it’s wrapped in a moody fog.

But yesterday, something odd happened. I walked in through the doors and found my brothers and sister lounging on the couches and reading! books! lots and lots of books! Apparently they gave up on thinking that mother would bring back cable and went to the library. It was so weird…I mean we read…but not in so long. I mean, why would be choose reading and thinking when TV would mindlessly entertain us?

I remember a couple of years ago when we had no TV (for 4 yrs! we thought we were Amish or something lol) I used to read 300 page novels in days. I remember reading sometimes up to 2 am in the mornings. I loved books. My siblings loved reading too - our favourite hangout used to be our local library and Chapters bookstore. In fact, we made so much late payments that I’m afraid I could’ve used that money for my tuition if I’ve saved it.

I’m so happy to see the love of reading rekindled in my young brother and sister’s lives. I realized they missed so so so much when TV was around. I talked to my mother and we both agreed that never will TV grace our house again - we abused it and it hurt us in a big way. If my bro and sis are interested in a movie - I’d take them to the theater maybe once in a month or two months.