Assignment 5 - Television habits fostered from a young age - Cat Lucier

In Utah, the school that I attended for second through fifth grades was incredible. In their code of conduct that each student was supposed to read and sign each year. Now, I doubt anyone besides my family actually read the entire book, much less followed all the rules, but my parents agreed with practically every word in that book, and followed it religiously. I accredit a good amount of my academic success to that. 

One of the strongly suggested recommendations in the book was to not watch television on school nights. Even before that, my family barely watched any TV. We had an old tube TV that my parents got from my great-grandma after she died. It would be good for you to also know that we have never owned any sort of gaming console.

What did we do instead of watching TV? My sister and I read books. Before we moved to Kentucky and had to get rid of a ton of our books, we probably had nearly a thousand books. Granted, most were picture books, but we read those over and over until I began to outgrow them, when my mum started buying me chapter books. Alas, she couldn't buy them fast enough, so she gave up. I spent hours at the city public library and in my school library, and when I had exhausted those, my dad would check out books for me from the University of Utah library. 

One exception to the rule of no TV on school nights occurred in early 2014 when Cosmos: A Spacetime Odessey, narrated by Neil deGrasse Tyson, came out. We brought the TV up from the basement into the living room so we could watch it. Cosmos aired Sunday nights on Fox, and we would move the couches around for the best angle and eat my dad's pizza for dinner. If you haven't watched the series, I highly recommend; I believe it is available on Netflix.

So my sister and I formed this habit of very limited television, and it carries into now. Of course we enjoy it, but we rarely watch more than 2 or three episodes of something at one time. 

I'll preface my next point with a bit more history of my reading habits: I've always loved mystery books; I've read almost if not all of both the Nancy Drew series and the Hardy Boys, as well as Encyclopedia Brown. As I've matured a bit, I've gotten very much into Stephen King - evolving from mystery into the horror genre. In relation to my television-watching customs, a few years ago I started getting bored with the standard Marvel/DC superhero shows because they were so predictable, and I got hooked on crime shows. I watched Forensic Files for quite a while, but then my friend Taylor got me hooked on Criminal Minds. Some episodes are so incredibly twisted, I can't hold down my overactive imagination at night and I sleep with the light on. I've always relished that feeling of sitting on the edge of panic. It's wild.