Image from schimilblick via Flickr
Many of my friends, colleagues and readers of this blog will know that I am a true gadget freak, and am totally enamored of technology, and will try and use it in all aspects of my life.
Which is why many of them are totally surprised when they find out that March 2009 will mark one year that we have not had TV at our household! I mean, we have a TV set – an ancient 17 inch cathode ray that was given to me by a former employee about 10 years ago. People walk into my house – see this in the lounge and laugh, saying “Where is the 50 inch plasma display?”. They are incredulous when I tell them this is all I have, and No, we don’t have any other TV’s in the house. Not even in our, or the kids bedrooms.
When we moved into our house last year, we noticed that there was no ‘free to air’ aerial on the roof. There was a satellite dish for Austar, but we never had an account, and my wife put her foot down and declared that from now on, we were not going to be a TV household.
To be fair, my sons and I had a lot of problems about this in the early days, but now, 12 months down the track…I don’t even miss it.
We do have a collection of DVD’s that we watch from time to time, but what do we do after dinner and on those long Sunday afternoons I hear you ask (as many of our friends have).
Well, we have reverted back to the ‘old fashioned’ ways of entertaining ourselves. We play cards – Uno and Skip-Bo being some favourites. We play Monopoly, and leave the board set up for days while we continue a game. We talk, we play guitar, we read to the kids, we make up stories. Sounds quaint I know, but it is FUN…seriously.
Same for game consoles. People think I am mad when I say we have NO Playstations or XBoxes or Wii’s in our household. Oh, all right, I bought myself a Sony PSP a couple of years back, but I haven’t seen it for months. I have no idea where it is now, nor the charger to get it up and running again.
Both my wife and I cannot stand it when we go out for family dinners with friends, and their kids have their noses buried in their Nintendo DS all through the meal. We try and teach our kids to enjoy conversation and interact with their friends and adults.
It has been challenging at times, especially with the peer pressure that the kids get at school. But overall, Sam (my wife) and I are happy with the results so far, and we look forward to being a TV and game console free family for a while yet.
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