Rigatoni.. I mean Media Memoir

Growing up, the only bit of media consumption that I can remember my family (including myself) actually doing was watching television. More specifically, movies or shows. My earliest memory with media that I distinctly recall is watching Barney videotapes at home and running upstairs to my room when one of the characters told me to "get my Barney toy out!". Now that I think more about it, I'm pretty sure I had at least three or four Barney videotapes and at least one Barney music casette. One of the videos was "Barney in Concert". My nana still has it, actually. I'm pretty sure she used it to brainwash my seven year old brother into submission at one point.

It hurts, doesn't it?

We watched movies every friday night as a family. My father and I had a routine- we would go pick up a pizza and in the car I would ask him if we could get a "v-i-d-e-o". Yes, I spelled it out. No, I don't know why. I was a strange kid. Observe:

This was the first day of third grade for me and the first day of kindergarten for my sister. I'm on the right. At least I had cool keychains.

Anyways.. There was something very wonderful about our friday night movies. The more I think about it, however, the more I wonder about why we chose movies to be the medium of choice for family bonding. I never quite understood that. My guess is that convenience could be one. Why get out a board game or cards or something along those lines and make another mess to clean up when we could press a button on the VCR? Also, if there was something that got my sister and I (brother hadn't arrived yet) to stop arguing over stuffed animals and be quiet for an hour and a half, my parents were so there.

The second medium that I can think of is the newspaper. I know it sounds lame, but the newspaper was always present at our table on sunday mornings. I was in love with the comic pages. More specifically, Slylock Fox. It's a puzzle-ish, brain teaser-ish, really confusing crime solving blurb in the kid's section. I felt so important solving those problems! They didn't make any sense and I never really understood why upstanding citizens such as Harry M. Moose kept leaving his chickens out and why Slylock Fox was always the one who had to find them. Needless to say, I owned it. Every. Single. Week.

I used to play a game with my parents those mornings. As they read, they always held the paper infront of their faces like shields. I was often confused by this, as it seemed like such a strange thing to do. I would, with the stealthiness of a ninja, sneak up on them (really I was reaching across the table awkwardly not trying to knock any juice over) and use my fingers to flick their newspapers. BAM! They would huff and puff and I would laugh hysterically. Like I said before. Strange kid.