Oh No, I’m Getting Old….

Do you remember watching this show?

No one likes to admit they are getting old, but I’m admitting it, I’m getting old!  I came to this conclusion Sunday night after my kids went to bed.  Kevin and I actually had the TV remote in our possession.  This rarely happens, and not because our kids rule the house, but because we hardly ever are in the house to watch TV before going to sleep.

As Kevin and I surfed through the channels, I stopped on several shows, and the majority of the shows were reality TV shows.  One show was about people purchasing the possessions in an unclaimed storage unit and sorting through someone else’s boxes in search of undiscovered treasures.  Sounds fun….for a minute…..I don’t like sorting through my own “stuff” so there is no way I would pay to sort through a stranger’s “stuff.”  This show was interesting for about 5 minutes to me.  I know many people may find this interesting but it just isn’t something that fascinates me.  Maybe Kevin and I should open up some of our old barns and sheds and allow the highest bidder to come in and clean it up for us though?  If nothing else, our barns and sheds would be cleaner!

The next show I stopped on was a reality TV show about the life of a mother and her family of girls.  I had heard of the show but I never knew what it was about so I decided to find out.  Bad decision on my part because Kevin watched about 45 seconds and told me he ‘was going to look at a farming magazine, at least it was something that interested him’ he said.  I have to admit, I was a little surprised to see someone paid this family to make a show of their life.  It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary; there may even be several families who could say it mirrored their life.  I tried to keep an open mind about the show because I had heard several major news outlets reference the show.  After 15 minutes, I just couldn’t get interested in the show and the bleeped out words were starting to get loud and I was afraid it would wake up the kids.

It was after this I decided I was getting old because the first thing that came to my mind was “this isn’t what TV was like when I was younger.”  YIKES, how many times have I heard MY PARENTS say this?  Too many to count!  This means I’m turning into my parents…I’m getting old.

Yes, I will admit to watching (without the sound of bleeping) “Little House on the Prairie,” “Highway to Heaven,” and “The Walton’s” as a very young child.  As I got older I watched “Growing Pains,” “Family Ties,” and “Different Strokes.”  They always had a story behind each show and most had a happy ending.  No, happy endings are not always reality, but that’s why I like to watch TV from time to time; to escape the realities of our farm life and just enjoy an hour of relaxation.  Watching someone else’s family argue and fight isn’t relaxing to me and it wasn’t something that made me laugh either.  I like to laugh, its good medicine for the soul after a challenging day on the farm.

I know reality TV is what is ‘hot’ right now, and I’m probably in the minority when it comes to not being hooked on it.  I’m not criticizing anyone who finds these shows amusing or funny, I just can’t get interested in these shows.  I guess maybe if there was a reality TV show about farming and ranching I might be interested in it….and maybe not.  I’m afraid the drama factor would distort the reality of what farming and ranching really is.  Some days on our farm are very boring and other days are full of drama, but it’s a different kind of drama.  It’s the drama of cattle being out because they broke through a fence and the calves are in the middle of the road.  Or the drama of running to town (70 miles away) to pick up parts only to find out when you get back to the farm you have the wrong parts and your husband specifically told you the part he needed didn’t have a “point” like this on it.  Or the drama I face the most, the drama of the computer not working in the mill.  This means we can’t make feed for the hogs and that’s serious business.  It normally requires a look through the event log to figure out the problem and 20 minutes later we are back up and running.  From time to time though, it’s not that simple and a call to tech support is in order.  This doesn’t sound TV worthy to me!  (I’m laughing here.)

Regardless, I have now entered the land of the “old.”  Oh well, it’s much better than trying to re-live my teen years again!  And its’ much safer than a mid-life crisis!