Wear it Out!

In our society, we rarely wear things out anymore. When something has a problem, we tend to throw it away and get a new one. Or we upgrade. My parents got me a television during my first year of college and it's been my tv ever since. It was fine. It wasn't too big. It wasn't too small. It was made before there were DVDs, so I had to run the cable for the DVD player through the VCR. No need to upgrade. Maybe there was a resolution difference... I'm not sure. I don't really care about fine resolution or high definition or whatever....

A couple of years ago, my daughter smashed in the power button. To turn the TV on, we had to stick our finger inside the little hole and press.... something. It worked fine. I got really used to it. A few months ago, the TV started shorting out. We could hit it on the side and it would work again. My 2 yo daughter got pretty good at this (a little Fonz... remember how he would hit the jukebox on Happy Days?) Finally, it stopped working. We actually wore the TV out.

I wasn't too sad about this. We don't really watch that much TV and I've noticed that it makes my kids grumpy. They fight about TV and they seem to get in a bad mood when they watch. Yep... even when they watch movies. I also noticed that when the semester's out, I tend to veg out in front of the TV, even though I think it's pretty evil. So, when the TV died, we decided to just let it die. A couple days later, the kids stopped asking about it.

Since the TV died, several people offered us spare TVs they had laying around. We finally took someone up on the offer, and got a small Sharp TV. It's the exact same model that I had before, but even smaller. I am going to put it on a little cart in the closet. It's nice not to have to watch everything on the computer, but I don't want a TV-centric life.

Pretty soon, with the HD thing, my TV will only work for movies anyways, so we might as well get used to it.

If you have kids, do you have a TV policy? Do you think that it makes them act differently when they watch a certain amount of TV? What about when they go over to friends' houses?

So.... what else have I worn out?

My sneakers. I'm so proud. I've now downgraded them to water shoes (for when I go tubing).

Speaking of TV and movies....
I have some burning questions about the Disney Princesses:

• Why does Cinderella lose everything at midnight except the glass slippers?
• Why do Sleeping Beauty's parents bring her back for a party on her 16th birthday? Didn't the curse say she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel on her birthday? Couldn't they have waited one more day? And shouldn't someone have been watching her more carefully on that day?

My daughter's favorite princess (gag!) is the Little Mermaid. She has a series of books about the princesses with little "lessons" about kindness. I don't understand how the Little Mermaid can be part of this series. She is totally disobedient and decides to ditch EVERYTHING for a guy she's met one time. She leaves her family, her home, and her whole species (genus?). Bad role model.