Watching television with my mom

My mom has a weird relationship with our television. She often complains that there are no good shows on, but I also often find her asleep in front of the telly when her shows (the ones she actually likes) are on.

She takes it too seriously

My mom used to watch a lot of “Dr. Phil” and “CSI” (she quite likes crime series in general). These days she watches anything with an actor in from her youth, like Tom Selleck in “Blue Bloods”. She has seen a lot of weird stuff on these TV shows. Sometime, even now still, she’ll come up to me and say weird stuff like: “Don’t eat too fast and choke to death”, or “Please don’t get pregnant right now”, or “Don’t get into a car with strangers”, or “Don’t become anorexic” (believe me, I love sugar and fried foods too much to do that). To which I sarcastically reply, “But now I want to” (because I’m a bad person). She hates it when I do that.

The weather forecast

My mom also has a strange fondness for the weather forecast, or should I say, a weather forecast – because she wants to watch all of them. She always wants to know what the weather is going to be like the next day, which is understandable, in case she needs to schedule her things around it. What is not understandable is that my mom watches the weather on three (or more) different channels.

Let me put this madness into perspective. My parents watch the 7’o clock news, so the weather is on at about 7:30. The thing is, all three channels have the weather on at about the same time. So, it’s two minutes of frantic channel hopping. And I mean, all the channels predict the weather roughly the same. Apparently one channel’s weather is just not sufficient. I wonder if she works out the average or what?

Misheard names

Also, my parents don’t often watch sitcoms, but sometimes my mom will sit with me and watch a rerun of some show in the late afternoon. One day she joined me on the couch as I watched “The Middle”. It’s about a middle-class family of five, living an average life, yet funny things happen to them. My mom and I can relate to that.

The family on “The Middle” consists of a mother and father (whose names escape me) and their three children Axl, Sue, and Brick. Five minutes into the show, my mom gets this confused look on her face.

• My mom: Why does that woman keep calling her son an asshole?!
• Me: Mom, his name is Axl!

Obviously, I found this absolutely hilarious. Later that night I told my dad about all of this “The Middle” hilarity.

• My dad: What kind of a person calls their kid Axl?
• Me: That’s nothing! The other kid’s name is Brick.
• My dad: Who calls their kid Prick?!
• Me: No, it’s Brick!

Can you imagine meeting someone and they say: “Say hi to my kids: Sue, Prick and Asshole.”

Watching television with my mom is an adventure on its own.

Do your parents have weird television viewing habits? Let me know – contact details below.

Meh.

Michelle

P.S. If you’d like to contact me, feel free to comment below, send an email to thatmichelleperson@gmail.com, or follow me on Twitter @M_ClutterBox.