This week was “Turn of the TV Week” for Sierra and Jackson’s school. No TV, no video games, and no internet. Each day the kid’s that participate bring a note from home stating that they survived another day without the mind numbing world of television, video games, and internet cluttering their tiny little heads.

They are then awarded some small reward for the accomplishment, nothing major but if there’s one thing kids hate more than anything is to see another kid get something they didn’t get. No matter how useless the item in question is if their classmate got one they want one. This phenomenon is ratcheted up another notch when it’s a sibling that is the receiver of, well anything. Anything except punishment or chores of course.

When my dad would tire of me and my brother Jarvis’s constant bickering, which was often, he would make an exaggerated claim that we would fight about who had the biggest well…restroom deposit. Dad may have thought it to be an exaggerated claim, but truth be told we argued about that too.

Nowadays I find myself uttering the same thing to my kids when they won’t stop arguing. I find myself saying a lot of the things my dad used to say to us, and it always makes me lose my train of thought. I’ll say it with the intention of continuing with my futile attempt to stop the arguing but when it comes out I stop and think to myself, “Did I just say that?”

Then the memory of Jarvis and I, runty, slack jawed, dirty, and vacantly staring at my strapping young dad saying the same exact thing comes to mind. It makes me laugh and the argument between my kids over who ate the most Cheese Nips doesn’t seem to bother me as much.

When one is bothering the other I always tell the botheree to simply ignore the botherer and they will stop. Good sound advice that is completely impractical in the sibling battlefield. Advice that even as I say it I chuckle to myself at the stupidity and impossibility of it.

It’s possible to ignore a bothersome sibling for a short period of time but eventually they’ll get to you, they know your buttons, and eventually you snap. Sometimes when you do snap it’ll startle the botherer into knocking it off. Sometimes we all need to be drug around by the throat for a little corrective “advice” to encourage us to “knock it off.”

As far as ignoring things or people that bother you, when it comes to TV, radio, and internet it’s easy, you just turn the channel or shut it off. So this week was peaceful without any multimedia telling us what to think, what to do, or who we should be. We successfully ignored them all week, and nobody got hurt.

We don’t watch much TV the way it is. We don’t have cable or internet so maybe my kids had an advantage over their classmates who had to fight off the beckoning call of 24/7 cartoons. I know my kids like to watch TV, they asked Santa for cable this past Christmas, but they always find something else to do.

Like argue.