Homer Simpson’s TV wisdom
“When will I learn? The answers to life’s problems aren’t at the bottom of a bottle. They’re on TV!”
“It’s not easy to juggle a pregnant wife and a troubled child, but somehow I managed to squeeze in 8 hours of TV a day.”
“Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover.”
“Let’s just plop them in front of the TV. I was raised in front of the TV and I turned out TV.”
I rarely watch TV when I’m home during the day. Every once in a while I’ll see a movie I enjoy is airing on one of the Encore channels, or there’s a marathon of a show I like running for an entire day. Those are the exceptions. For the most part, though, when the TV is on it’s turned to Disney or Nickelodeon, or the kids aren’t around and I’m watching TiVo.
Most of the shows I save on TiVo aren’t the most appropriate for kids; they’re either dramas or naughty-humor sit-coms. When Katie or Jack walk in while I’m watching, I pause the show. If they start making themselves comfortable, I remind them that “this show’s not for kids,” and they grumble and stomp out because I am totally the meanest mom ever. I like quiet while I’m watching TV, and it’s very, very rare that I’m watching anything that would interest them anyway.
Until last week. Last week Jack came in and caught me watching the first Batman movie, which I found while flipping channels. It’s a fun movie; Jack Nicholson is at his best as The Joker, he plays it mostly campy, and the plot is much simpler than the later Batman movies. Jack has taken a sudden interest in Batman since he got the Lego Batman video game, and asked if he could watch it. I looked at Victor, and both of us did a quick inventory of the violence we could remember in the movie. We told him it was alright to watch, and he saw about half an hour of it before it was time for bed.
Since then, every time he’s come into a room I’m in and the TV’s on, he asks if it’s Batman.
No.
No, it’s not.
No, not this time either.
It was Batman once, honey, and it probably won’t ever be again.
Because here’s one thing you can be sure of: if Mommy’s watching TV, there’s a 75 percent chance it’s some variation of Law & Order or CSI.
It’s kind of Mommy’s thing.
