The Broken TV

When she came home from school and walked in the front door we were sitting on the couch.  The baby, Cari, and I.  The TV was off.  She walked in the room, looked to the TV, and back to me.  "What's wrong?  Why is the TV off?"

Her question was a clue.  It was the hint that gave everything away.  "Why was the TV off" meant that it's ALWAYS on!

I answered her, "It's broken.",  and she looked horrified.  Then Cari develops the story by saying that I was trying to pick up the TV and I dropped it, causing a crack in the screen.

Meredith runs up and checks it out with her nose touching the screen.  As she inspects she asks, "What happens if we turn it on?"  She says she can handle it with a few cracks in the picture.  She is desperate to watch something.

I tell her the color will leak out and we'd be left with a black & white television.  She decides that's pretty severe and agrees to leave it off.

Now she wants to know when it can get fixed. Cari tells her it will have to be after Christmas before we get a new one.  That was all it took.  Meredith had a melt down.  It was as if she had just lost her best friend.  We decided to end the joke and tell her the truth.  "It's not broken, we just weren't watching it."  Having seen her reaction to the broken TV we declared it a no TV day.  She was obviously too attached.

She stays upset and begs for thirty minutes of television.  After my refusal she claims that there is nothing to do.  This poor girl has been brain washed by the television for too long!  Cari starts listing all the things that can be done without the  use of a television.  Meredith quickly rejects them all in an attempt to get the TV back.  Finally, I request that I get a list of possible activities written down and read to me by Meredith.  It's a busy work task to move the conversation along.

An hour later when her brother got off the bus, she begged us to play the same joke on him.  He came and sat next to me and started talking to me.  He payed no attention to the blackened TV screen.  Finally, Meredith asked him to look at it.  She told him it was broken but he didn't seem to care much.   He asked what happened and I told him the color leaked out.  Without looking at me he asked, "It uses light bulbs, right?"    The boy was too smart for such a prank.  I told him the truth, that we're having a day without TV.  His reply, "Ok."

That's my boy!

Do you have any family members addicted to TV?  Have you ever played intervention and taken it away from them?  Let me know how that went in the comments.