As most of you probably already know, I basically grew up without a TV. I remember "movie nights" - special events every month or so when my Dad would rent several videos and a VCR and come home and hook up a computer monitor, and set it all up on the fireplace. Then we'd all stay up late into the night watching movies and eating junk food and camping out in sleeping bags in the living room. After every movie, we'd have a family discussion: What were the people who made this movie trying to say? Do we agree with this? Than, after a few days, the equipment would all get packed up and taken back to the video store.

Of course, I'd still get to watch movies/TV from time to time at friends' or grandparents' houses, or sometimes in motel/hotel rooms on vacation (in the rare event we weren't camping). Eventually, it got to the point where my parents decided we were watching too much TV that way, and limited it to one hour a day at friends' houses. As far as movies, my parents followed the ratings fairly strictly. PG means parental guidance - so, generally speaking, we weren't allowed to watch PG movies unless they had seen it first and OK'ed it. I remember being at my friend's house for a birthday party and needing to call home to get permission:

Me: Mom, they want to watch a movie called "Princess Bride," it's PG - can I watch it?
Mom: I don't know. I haven't seen that one"
Me: Please??
Mom: (to my Dad in the background: What do you think? Dad: I haven't seen it either. But at least she called first; maybe she's old enough now.) OK.
Me: Thanks!!!

(a while later)

Me: Mom, they want to watch a movie called "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," it's PG - can I watch it?
Mom: You already watched one - I think that's enough for today.
Me: No I didn't! They all got bored and we never finished "Princess Bride" so now they picked this one.
Mom: OK. But this is the last one.
Me: I hope so!

It always seemed to me that my TV-watching public schooled friends got bored way too easily; especially with movies! It was infuriating. Even today I have a hard time keeping my cool if Adrian gets bored with a movie (as he often does; perhaps even with good reason).  People complaining about being bored really gets on my nerves. As a kid, I wasn't even allowed to say the word "bored." The only time I've felt that someone outside my family could sympathize with my view of boredom was when reading something by Gatto:

"One afternoon when I was seven I complained to [my grandfather] of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainty not to be trusted."

Anyway, back to the main topic. Eventually, video stores quit renting VCRs, and we ended up buying one (a VCR, not a video store). At first it was only connected now and then, but inevitably the times when my parents forgot to disconnect it were longer and longer. Eventually, the old monitor broke, and my parents bought an actual TV. Grandparents and other people gave us videos as gifts. We never got cable, and we never watched TV per-se, but video watching became quiet commonplace. I'm not sure if my younger siblings really remember literally living in a house without a TV as I do, or the special movie nights with a computer monitor and rented VCR on the fireplace. I also don't think they have the same sense of always trying to be prepared for a discussion of every movie.

My parents still stuck to their guns as far as ratings, though. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that my younger siblings often watched movies without permission at their friends' houses, and unlike me never bothered to call home and ask. As a teenager, I remember it had become quite common to take advantage of the loophole that old black and white movies from the library very often were unrated. Haha! Which spawned a unique, if small, family culture amongst us siblings.

Another thing that is a unique feature of our family culture is: Read-It! Many other Christian homeschooling families also banned TV (or at least severely limited it), and paid strict attention to movie ratings. But, my Dad did something that I consider truly brilliant: he created a substitute. Perhaps his love of good literature (deep at least, if narrow at points) goes back to the fact that somewhere in our family tree is the tutor of Charles Dickens. He really was able to bring a story alive: he wasn't simply reading words on a page, he breathed a unique and personal voice into every character  - it was hard not to listen. I remember when he used to read Tolkien's orcs, he'd end up needing my mom to bring him a glass of water every 5 minutes, and we'd never get as many chapters out of him on those nights. But, of course, we tried. This is where the names comes from. At the end of every chapter, where the author so artfully leaves you hanging, we'd chant, scream even: Read-It! Read-It! Read-It! Dit-Daddy, Dit-Daddy, DIT!!

Of course, as I got older, I did get a bit spoiled with it. I remember more than once being quite put out that I had to spend the evening at home and listen to The Hobbit or something for the fourth time because we were having "family time" and all I wanted to do was go over to my friends' house.

Really, the culture of my family owes alot to my Dad: What he forbade, why, and what he replaced it with. My parents used to often say something along the lines of "If it's not good for kids, it's not good for adults either." Thus was avoid, I think, alot of the hypocrisy that comes along with rules in other families. It wasn't that we weren't allowed to watch TV, but then as soon as we were asleep the parents would stay-up watching prime time. It was that life is both different and more important than TV: for them as well as us.

The eviction of TV from our house started when my older brother was a baby. My Dad says that alot of the reason why he decide to quit watching TV was because he found it addicting, but really wanted to spend more time improving his drumming skills. My parents literally cut the plug off the TV cord, and then put the TV in the basement. After a few months, they had some excuse to watch something, and my Dad would mend the cord. Then, they'd forget to put the thing back in the basement, and would slowly get addicted again, until they decided to cut the cord again. This continued until they finally cut the cord to a stub, and decide just to throw out the whole set. It was over a decade before they bought a replacement, and that replacement never took up the same prominence as the old one.

Homeschool groups often put on graduation ceremonies - and because the groups are small, often  each graduate is allowed some time to showcase a talent. My older brother gave a speech (which my Dad helped him write). I don't remember the whole thing, but I remember a phrase "You can either sit around and watch TV; or get up and do something and be on TV." So far, none of us has really ended-up on TV (these days, I'm not even sure I'd want to be on TV), but I think my life has been much more interesting because of the lack of TV. And so, I thank my parents for (mostly) banning TV from our house.