This weekend while spending some time a friend I was talking to her about how we watch the few TV shows we like to watch - we hook one of the laptops up to the TV with cables of some sort or another. Her 10 year old daughter was right there as we were talking and asked why I couldn't just watch it while it's on.
"We don't have cable TV, and our antenna doesn't work."
"So can't you just Tivo it?!"
"No, we don't have a Tivo because usually a DVR requires a cable TV subscription."
"You don't have TV?!"
This young girl (whom I adore, by the way) was floored that we don't have cable TV! My kids are no longer phased by it. We've been without it for over a year and a half now. We have Netflix so they can still watch some of the stuff they like and we rent movies (for free!! hehe!!) at the Blockbuster Express boxes (Blue Box!) every once in a while.
It really got me thinking... this generation, these kids that we are raising are SO used to instant gratification. We have cell phones that do things that I never imagined as a kid! I'm not that old, but I am in my early 30's and if I'm perfectly honest with you, I will tell you that I was SO embarrassed to have my first cell phone. I passed my drivers test and less than a week later, my dad brought home a phone... OH-MY-GOSH... what was he gonna make me do?!?! Take that brick with me everywhere?! Well he did, and it came in handy. I sure as heck couldn't call daddy from my pager when my beat up 1976 Mercedes Benz (my first car, by the way) refused to start in the mall parking lot while it was pouring rain outside. The cell phone helped. Back then, did I think that something smaller than that brick would be able to check my email, order pizza or give me directions to those Supertones and Five Iron Frenzy concerts I was always driving to?! Heck no!
My children will never know a world without GPS, mobile email, iPhones, iPads (both of which my kids can work better than I can - they are only 5 and 8!) or TV's without remote controls! I want to give them whatever purity I can - plain simple things. All these things are good and do have a place, but we can honestly live without them.
We don't need to go to the grocery store to buy cookie dough to make cookies... let's make the dough to make the cookies!!
We don't need to run out to buy a loaf of bread... let's make some!
We don't need to keep up with the Jones'... let's be happy with what we have and not depend so much on material things. There is so much more to life than all these electronic gadgets and do-dads, so much more than all this "stuff" that society makes us believe we need. I have decided to try and teach my children the difference between a "want" and a "need". It's something we've been working on. Something we need to do better with. Something that I hope they will understand as adults.
