Reality TV and Channel Surfing

One of the fun asides, whenever we spend time with our grown kids, is getting to see what they watch on TV. After the usual shows we share, American Idol, 24, Lost and Survivor, they go off into a world Don and I are oblivious to. Our TV viewing is pretty boring by comparison.

Who knew? There are shows about motorcycles being repaired by family members who yell at each other a lot; babies being born and born and born; men who go out in the wild, on purpose, with nothing much beyond a pocket knife and a flint, knowing ahead of time they'll live off raw, still alive fish and lizards; people who turn in people who don't have a clue what to wear and are encouraged to throw out all their clothes and start over. Families who have as many kids as those giant cartons of eggs!

There are shows about people whose houses have mold growing places beyond the shower curtain and pets who use the entire house as a litter box; wives who agree to care for bratty children, leaving behind their own well-behaved kids;  preachers who yell and have crazy hair; people talking about famous people, even though all their lives are the same - make money, spend more, marry, cheat, divorce, repeat.

It's amazing to realize those 200 channels the cable guy told us about are alive and well with regular viewers, and some of the shows are fun, fun! Our all time favorite was about some guy who had a miniature horse as an indoor pet and had white carpet. 

I came home from my last trip to Texas with three new shows to record on our Tivo - 'How Clean is Your House?' (not very or really, depending on what you're comparing it to).

'Man 'vs Wild'. I LOVE this show - the host, Bear, fascinates me. Why the participants of Survivor don't watch all his reruns before they head off to the island mystifies me. He clearly shows how to snap the head off a lizard, give it a squeeze then pop it down the hatch. I have to wonder if I'm the only person on the planet who knits while watching.

My new favorite - 'What Not to Wear'.  I'm convinced I can clean myself up a bit if I watch enough episodes of this show, and once in awhile I feel good, knowing ahead of time, why something is awful. Right now I'm on a mission for a pair of pointed toe size 11 shoes, knowing ahead of time they will make my feet look like size 12. Even when you're 5'10" with size 11 feet, apparently the rule still stands - look as tall and thin as you can. I wonder if that means I should be wearing v-necks so my already too-skinny neck will look even skinner. I'll have to watch more episodes to find out.

Of all the shows we've watched, the least realistic to me was 'wife swap'. I can believe people will jump out of planes and eat raw lizards, they will scream at each other over motorcycle parts (I find that very believable actually), they will refrain from cleaning their house, treating it as one big potty or ash tray, they will throw away all their clothes to get a card with $5000 wardrobe allowance on it, but nobody, absolutely nobody would leave their well-behaved kids to go spend time with someone else's brats.

When I had finally trained our kids to behave in Walmart so that we could buy school supplies for everyone, or to spend time at their grandparents' home for a week and not kill each other, when we got dinnertime down to an event where nobody cried and/or was sent to bed without eating, well there's just no way I would have agreed to take on teaching that to someone else's kids again.

That's a bit too unrealistic for me.