The Daily Stain - Times Haven't Changed Much

When I was a kid, my family would spend much of our down time in our living room. Today, in our house this same gathering point is called the "family room". Today's modern "living room" is where all of the best furniture goes and nobody is allowed to use it. It's really more of a non-living room isn't it?

But I digress. In the living room of the olden days as my kids now call it (circa late 60's early 70's..now that's OLD isn't it?) my parents would sit in their chairs and read the daily edition of the Flint Journal while my sister and I would watch TV. I remember the scene and sounds as if it were yesterday...the sudden swish and crinkle of changing newspaper pages; my mom asking my dad "you done with the front section yet?", that rapid fire click of the channel changing followed by either my mom or dad scolding us with.. "Would you STOP that?! You're going to break that dial and that will be the end of the TV because we're not going to buy another one if you do!"

"But what the heck, mom? I just wanted to see if the Tiger's game started yet. You gotta jump on the dial because it takes forever to go from channel 5 to channel 12 and back by just one click at a time!"

Fast forward to our family room this morning...as I type this blog. My wife and I are sitting in our "chairs" and instead of reading newspapers we have our noses plastered into our laptop computers while my two daughters are watching a movie we taped on the DVR (Tivo). My younger daughter just asked my older daughter to pass her the remote to the TV so she could pause the movie. She wanted to check to see if iCarly taped last night.

With blind instinct I literally just said; "Hey, would you stop throwing that remote across the room?! If you break it I'm not buying another one!"