My Interesting Reaction to Daytime TV
I experienced something interesting earlier this week. I thought I'd get thoughts on it...maybe just share it. In dealing with some physical issues I decided to take a day off work and spend the first half of the day with some ice on my arthritis. Works well for me and I was a bit too active, apparently, during the weekend. Anyway, in a brief moment of boredom I actually turned on the tv to the standard mid-day broadcasts...perhaps out of morbid curiosity. Wading through all the attorney ads, I stumbled on a judge show. This judge has random people from all over the country come to plead their case against each other. Is this a good random sample? Perhaps. Judge Mathis...seems like an interesting guy. In one case there was a 20-year old lady filing a claim against a 44-year old man, saying he was the father of her baby. She got pregnant while her man was in prison, apparently had multiple men in her life and was trying to pin the financial burden on this really uneducated guy. The guy, although dumb as a rock, seemed to really care about her and the kid but claimed he wasn't the father. The judge quickly pointed out the victim in all that was the baby. Of course. And, of course, the paternity test showed the dummy who took the other stand wasn't the father. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age. I'm certainly changed by being a father...very changed. In watching this, and thinking these are real people living in America I started getting all weepy. I almost laughed at my reaction. I'd describe it as the opposite of the end of the movie About Schmidt...where Nicholson's character realizes there's hope and gets all weepy. Perhaps I was reminded there really isn't much hope. I really work at being a good father. I know that by doing that I'm contributing (not that it's why I do it). But in seeing these poor idiots bumbling about I just started tearing up. The last time I did that was about three years ago when, in trying to help a guy at a print shop figure out some very basic math, I realized that he couldn't do it. Perhaps I am asking myself why in the hell my fellow citizens keep screwing up their kids. I don't know. It's kind of personal...but I thought I'd share. No more daytime tv for me, probably forever. LOL...
Then I realized that a lot of what ZI was taught in school is now not taught. For example, none of my 4 school age grand children were taught how to tell time on a "normal clock" Every clock they saw was didital. 3 of the 4 were not allowed to memorize the multiplication table from 2x to 12 X. I was require to pass a timed test on these facts in the 4th grade.
My wife and I sent about 20 minutes showing them the time on our coocoo clock. They get it now. Then can even look at my watch and tell the time.
It appears that we are training our children to fail in the simple thinkg that could easily prevent them from succeeding at the big things.
+1 for you
I am close enough to the redneck world to have known someone invited to go to Chicago from Madison to be on the show.
I think the idea it it's supposed to be morbidly fascinating. I don't care for that type of TV, but I'm not above it. My crap TV choice are those docudramas about mysterious crimes.