Life after cable

Before I married my husband, I had never had cable TV. My parents weren't that into TV; we didn't even have a television until I was almost a teen, and even then we used it mostly for watching movies. So when I lived on my own I didn't feel any need to fork over the fees for cable shows.

My husband has never not had cable, and so when we married he just kept his subscription and I enjoyed the luxury of watching TLC shows, NCIS reruns, and movies on demand.

Being parents had made us rethink some things—and I'm sure it will change our lives much more dramatically in the future. We opted to cancel cable TV. It's saving us a little bit, but mostly we cared about the character development of our little guy.

I'm not by any means saying you can't have hundreds of channels and raise kind, godly children. But for us, it was the best choice. We found ourselves watching shows with language and action that could be a detriment to Jack's little life—while he was in the room—and probably did nothing for us, either. Even commercials are pretty tasteless sometimes.

Anyway, this cutting off of cable came as a bit of a shock to the system when we were used to watching TV at night when we felt like doing nothing else, or in the morning to catch the news. The other day I came to the realization that the living room is pretty underutilized these days. It was an eye-opener to recognize that most of the time we spent there was consumed with TV.

In the past few days, we've rediscovered another item in the living room—our piano—and enjoyed making music as Jack pounds away at a few keys he's figured out how to reach. We didn't spend excessive time in front of the tube before, but we've been doing more reading, playing games, and talking. (Admittedly, we still watch a few favorite shows online—but that's also time we spend together since we make a point to do so rather than aimlessly channel surfing.)

We may head back to the land of cable someday. But for now, we like it here.