Well, I guess I should qualify that title a little bit. We are not TV-less. We still have TVs…very, very old ones that don’t work unless they are connected to some kind of cable or satellite dish. We are TV Programming-less. After months of contemplating it, I finally called and had them turn it off.
The last time I remember being programming-less was right after Ken and I moved into our second house, when we were expecting Jesse. Now, all those years later, for some reason, paying for programming was just not making so much sense anymore. Most of what we watched was junk. And a lot of it was the SAME old junk, over and over, and OVER! I mean, how many times do I need to see the same episodes of Law and Order or Forensic Files to know that they are always going to end the same way?! I think I had the TV on most of the time just for company—just for noise. But I live in a house with two teenagers and three dogs…there’s always noise!
The first several times I mentioned doing it, months and months ago, Jesse and Benjamin would sort of get that “deer-in-the-headlights” look, like they couldn’t believe I could really be serious. Then they got to where they would just roll their eyes at me, as if to say, “Sure, sure, sure…we know you won’t ever REALLY do it!”
Then about a month ago, the most amazing thing happened. The boys brought it up! They said how they thought we would be better off just having Netflix and watching whatever movies we chose to watch instead of watching the same old boring stuff! You could have knocked me over with a feather! I told them to think about it because in their entire lives, there has never been a time when we were programming-less. It would be a BIG change. I gave them about a week and we talked about it again. They were still saying, “Pull the plug!” So, that’s what I did. I called and got us set up with Netflix and we started choosing movies. So, instead of paying $80.00 a month for programming that we weren’t really watching, we’re paying only $20.00 a month and we get to choose what we want to watch. Saving money and having choices—sounds like a win-win situation to me.
The best part about the whole thing is that the boys, especially Benjamin, have been coming downstairs and actually watching movies WITH THEIR MAMA!!!! We are really spending more time together as a family. What a bonus!
So far, we have watched Karate Kid (the new one, with Will Smith’s son and Jackie Chan), which is a great movie; Shutter Island, which was good, but seeing Leonardo Dicaprio play middle-aged crazy sort of messed with my mind; Secretariat…really good family movie (btw…did you know the horse’s real name was Big Red? They only called him Secretariat because the racing commission required that all the horses have “unique” names.); and The Illusionist, which was good, but very predictable. I have passed on watching Jesse’s anime and Benjamin’s horror choices. All in all, I would have to say that so far, at least, “Lunsfords Unplugged” has been a good experience!
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