Too much TV — AKA Federal Falls almost kills us
Miss Seven has been getting really into infomercials this week: So far, she’s tried to coerce me into buying a steam mop, a new walking stick that has a pink handle and folds up, and funeral cover — because as she keeps reminding me, 42 is incredibly old.
Still, this isn’t as bad as her MasterChef phase from two years ago. That involved a napkin folded into a cravat and harsh critiques of all of my cooking. Or her RBT phase, which she talked about for ‘Show and Tell’ in Kindergarten.
But still, I have to admit that isolation, lockdowns, and a cooler-than-usual summer, have all resulted in far more screen time than I would normally give her. And to be completely honest, she’s not the only one.
Miss 13 spent her week of isolation watching Brooklyn 99 in bed, while Hubby worked on his PUBG score between bouts of work. I, having never watched any reality TV except MasterChef in 2020, watched Byron Baes; at the very least I thought I’d enjoy the shots of the ocean. It wasn’t until the third episode that I realised it wasn’t cutting-edge satire, cleverly highlighting the shallow world of image-obsessed Instagram “influencers”, and Chris Lilly wasn’t playing any of the characters, it was an actual reality TV show — and a terrible one at that.
That’s when I called it; we were having a week’s detox from screens. Miss Seven immediately wrote “I love to be on screens” as her “sc” word sentence in her homework booklet, so I knew this was the right decision for us all. The news of our family detox was met with abundant eye-rolling and groaning, so Hubby and I decided to kick this off with a quick hike to Federal Falls since we were being accused of torture anyway.
As always, upon arriving at the car-park, I see the sign that says, “Federal Falls Loop — 3.8kms” and in deep denial I think, ‘I can make that. How hard can 3.8km be?’ Let me just say this, if you’ve hiked Federal Falls and not sat down near the very bottom and demanded your other half call in a rescue chopper because you are not walking another metre, then you are clearly the “sporty” person in your relationship and I can’t relate to you at all. But still, we walked (while complaining) and were rewarded with the beautiful sight of water cascading over the falls. On the way back, when we stopped to avoid dying, we also watched a blue tongue lizard make its way through the undergrowth. It sure beat a day at home with everyone ignoring each other while on a different screen.
We celebrated with a family movie night where we discovered my favourite childhood book, This Can’t be Happening at McDonald Hall is now a movie! And it was on I-View! We resettled into our favourite positions on our snuggle couch and I watched the pure glee on Miss Seven’s face as she fell in love with the same stories that had shaped my childhood. This is exactly what screen time is for: connection and sharing. And sometimes, for putting on Bluey to escape for seven glorious minutes, because no parent is perfect.