See, my mother is a sports widow. She hates television and would prefer to unplug it forever, except that she loves my father and he enjoys a few shows. Growing up, we were allowed to watch tv only:
- On Saturday mornings before 9 am (which I have only recently discovered is a way of sleeping in when you have small children)
- General Conference (worldwide church mtg held twice a year)
- Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, maybe Today's Special if you're lucky
- Sports
But Saturday afternoons, Monday night football after FHE, Friday night basketball games, World Series, March Madness, the tv could get turned on without fear of raising the ire of our mother because Dad liked sports. I'm sure there were times that spectator sports drove her crazy (New Year's Day comes to mind), but hour after hour of time outs in the fourth quarter persisted on a fall afternoon. Many of my brothers used this to their advantage. Craig watched all sports, from golf and bowling to tennis and baseball. You have to really love the game to keep your brain from turning to mush after a marathon day of staring at the tv. I watch the US Open every year, but after an hour or two I am DONE. At least with the Olympics, you get some variety in sport. And that is not all! You still have two papers to read and the stats to go through and compare and contrast, not to mention BYU sportsline emails and internet crunching and munching. They are experts and can recall stats and games and athletes. They even named stuffed animals after key figures of the day.
So when I got married, I expected that Mark, my former football/basketball/volleyball playin man would be devoting hours to it. After all, that is what his dad does- every day after work, he retires to his room and watches a game or two or five. But Mark largely gave it up, since our weekends are busy or we're trying to spend time together. I wouldn't even think about it until fall was half over and he'd flip on a game for a few minutes. He does love tv, but usually he goes for shows I want to watch too, or action movies.
This year, he got scolded by a truly devoted fellow Bama-fan at church and I realized that it's mostly because of me... and my "to do" list and date night and Daddy Alone Time w/ each child every Saturday.
So, wanting to give him a little leisure time, I went and found a few games and turned them on, hoping to lure him into the room. And he actually spent a few minutes in front of the tv. In fact, we spent last Saturday night putting together our newest Ikea find while watching the Cougs make a comeback and then Texas Tech coming back for an amazing finish against #1 ranked Texas. Not that I cared who won, but it made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. (Especially since Mark did NOT want to put together that dresser and did NOT want me to buy anything from Ikea in the first place. But hey, it's for the boys, it'll be trashed in 2 years, why spend $400 on it?)
I know this could come back to haunt me, and it still might. Yet, I am grateful that my husband has watched a little football this season because it means that I am a good wife.
It makes me wonder, what other illogical things make people feel validated as a good wife/husband/sister/brother/mother/father/aunt/nephew/ whatever?
9 comments:
First, I don't see any bullet points. Are they invisible on my computer?
Second, there should be a caveat to your Saturday afternoon sports. In my brief tenure living with the Hansens, I wanted to watch college football, so I did my assigned chore (cleaning the garage) and turned on the game. But I was advised that the rule was that everyone had to be done with their chores, so I had to wait until everyone was done and missed out on taking advantage of Utah's sweet time zone advantage in which football starts at 10 am.
But I did enjoy my stay there. That was only a minor complaint.
Before I got married I hadn't watched TV in 3 years. But, my husband insisted on having ESPN. So not only did we need tv, but we had to get the more expensive cable package. I love tivo! Now we can record the games and then watch them after the kids go to bed! (just don't check your texts while watching, otherwise you might inadvertantly learn the score.) However, tivo does have his drawbacks, like when I only recorded the BYU game on saturday for 3 hours and missed the last 7 minutes of such an exciting ending. Yeah, pretty much I felt like the worst wife, ever!
PS Now I'm watching more tv than my husband.
I never really realized how weird of a word 'smurfs' is. And somehow I was able to get my way a lot and watch the shows that I wanted to. But sometimes my shows were shows like Spiderman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so you can see how some of the boys would watch those with me. Plus I ruled Tyler and Liesl with an iron fist. Also, don't forget all the tons of times that we watched TV illegally when mom and dad were gone and then would bolt when we heard the garage door open. You could always tell that we were watching TV since there would be a mound of couch pillows directly under the TV...
I think somebody was pulling the wool over Pete's eyes. I never had to wait until everybody was done with their jobs. I don't even remember that being a rule. All I know is that I finished my jobs around noon, ate some birkermusli, and watched sports until I got a headache, usually around dinner time, when Mom would make us turn off that infernal nonsense.
The reverse of what you do for Mark is what I do for Mel: I order chick flicks from NetFlix almost every week and we watch them together. I've even begun to enjoy them more than other types of movies. So the "conversion" works both ways.
How odd. Those bullet points were there last night. What happened? And Pete, I'm sure that rule of "everyone has to be done with their chores before game watching begins" was a great, albeit extremely short lived one. So short lived, that I have no recollection of it at all!
Just another example of the generation gap at the Hansens. I remember no sports on Saturday at all. I think it must have started after I moved out. I do know that Mom was very glad to come visit me the week after Christmas after Jan and Garrett were born so that she completely missed the New Year's sports marathon. The only show I remember watching on the sly was The Cosby show and I would usually go over to my friend's house to watch it. I do feel good when Scott watches a few minutes of a Jazz game or some other game because that means he actually has a few minutes of free time.
I always feel I'm a better wife when Todd gets time to play video games for a few hours. But don't tell him I said that :)
I feel like a good wife when I send my husband to work with a lunch, or have a nice beautiful dinner on the table. Unfortunately, I have not done a good job with either of these lately.
I don't see any bullet points. I'm a horrible wife. And I thought you said Mark watched a bunch of TV. If he's not watching sports, then what the heck is he watching?!
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