TV During Meals

Vince is a big fan of TV. I am not! When we got married, he had already moved into the house we bought and had been living there about two months before Chad and I were able to move to Kentucky so Vince had the house pretty much set up already.

There was a TV in the family room; a TV in the basement family room; a TV in the master bedroom and a TV in a little sitting room between the other two bedrooms. I had never had a house with more than one TV. I think of all the things Vince and I talked about before getting married, we had never talked about my dislike, and his love, of TV. If there was something we wanted to watch, turning the TV on was fine but turning it on the minute you got up, leaving it on when you left for work, leaving it on all day but the worst was coming to bed, turning the TV on, falling asleep with it on!

Chad was 9 and I didn’t want him having unsupervised use of TV so we took the TV out of the sitting room.

The TV in the master bedroom was next to go.

At our house in Missouri, you could see the family room TV from breakfast room, which is where we ate almost all our meals. I was pretty appalled that Vince thought it was ok to have the TV on during meals. We talked about why I didn’t think it was a good idea but he was never in full agreement about turning the TV off during meals so it sometimes happened and sometimes didn’t.

Last night, 15 years after the TV during meals discussion, we were talking about watching TV when we were kids. I never watched TV. I didn’t even know who Captain Kangaroo was and am not sure I ever heard about that one. Vince asked me if I watched Mrs. Rogers. Nope . . we just never watched TV.

Then we started talking about how the TVs were set up in our houses as kids. Both families had just one TV when we were growing up.

At our house, we had a window air conditioner unit right across from the sofa so if you sat in the “TV room” when the air conditioner was on, which was pretty much all the time in southwest Louisiana, it was freezing cold because that unit is what cooled the kitchen, dining room and TV room. It just wasn’t a comfortable room to be in and TV was never a priority when we were kids.

Vince began telling me about the room where they had the TV. Their TV sat in one room but you could turn it to face the dining room so you could watch TV while eating! That explains it! He grew up with it being ok to watch TV during meals. I grew up with us rarely watching TV and never ever during meals.

We then began talking about how many things we do as kids affect us into adulthood – things we don’t even think about. Vince always thought I was being kinda witchy wanting the TV off during meals but meals at our house had always been family time – everyone sitting down and eating together and talking about our days. For him, it was . . fix your plate, sit down and watch TV while you eat.

I fell asleep wondering what other “traditions” Vince and I had as kids that affect us into our adult lives . . things we haven’t even thought about. I wonder how many things we did with Chad affects how he does things with Nicole and with Addie.

We now have only one TV in the house. Since we don’t have cable, we mostly watch YouTube videos or Prime movies and because of that, we don’t turn the TV on first thing in the morning and leave it on all day so it’s never on during meals but not because I won that battle – just because that’s the way it is.

It was never an issue that I thought was a real problem but it is nice to understand why Vince felt one way and I totally felt another way about TV.

I’m thinking his parents must have taken him shopping a lot and we didn’t shop much when I was a kid. There has to be a reason for his love of shopping and my reason for begging not to have to leave the house. 🙂