Learning about TV

Everyone,

So this afternoon Butterfly was complaining that one of her movies was not working.

"You need to fix this movie because it is very sticky." I pulled it out of the player and there were fingerprints ALL over the disk. No wonder it was sticking. I told her we shouldn't touch the shiny side.

"Why?"

"Well, because that's where the movie is." She looked at the disk and looked up at me like I was crazy.

"The movie is on the TV. This (pointing to the disk) only tells it what to play," she told me matter of factly.

"Nooo, the disk IS the movie. Look, there's a little light on the inside of the dvd player that looks at the shiny side of the disk and gets the pictures. Then the light shines on the screen and the pictures come out."

"Oh, so you learned not to touch the shiny side when you were little huh? And now you're telling me!"

"When I was little we didn't have these kinds of movies. We had tapes. They were about as big as a book and we played them in a VCR."

She looks a little stunned at that. I continued, "And when Nana was little, she didn't have movies in her house. She had to go to a theater if she wanted to see one."

"No she didn't."

"Yes, I'm sure she did honey."

"Nope."

"You want to call her and ask?!"

"Yes!" So we called up my mom who told Butterfly what I said was true. Then my mom took it a step further and said that when Nana-Great (her mom) was little she didn't even have a tv at all!

Butterfly took the phone away from her ear and told me that Nana-Great had no tv when she was a little girl! She put the phone back to her ear and said, "That's HORRIBLE!" I think she was secretly interested though because she has kept asking me what Nana-Great did when she was little if she couldn't watch tv. I told her Nana-Great does what Butterfly does when she's not allowed to watch tv...she played!

Not so horrible, I think.

Safire