Thursday January 29. 10:00pm

“Watching TV & folding clean tablecloths & towels to take back to church tomorrow!”

Wacha watching, mom? Wild hare of a guess…is it the weather channel? The television that my mom watches involves three channels, maximum, and they are, in order of frequency:

1) The Weather Channel

2) Whatever my dad is watching/yelling at

3) The Cosby Show
Let’s take a look my mom’s plethora of options:

The Weather Channel

I will say her weather channel watching has decreased A LOT in the last few years because during prime time now the Weather Channel has realized that–spoiler alert–the weather doesn’t change THAT OFTEN for 24 hour weather coverage. And these assholes have been shoving clouds down our throat since 1982, saying “You Need Us For Everything You Do”.

At least their marketing campaign was honest in the “we’re actively trying to create a sense of anxiety and co-dependency in you” category. I’ve detailed how my mom loves those “Local on the 8s”. Thankfully she has been pretty underwhelmed by the egregiously sensational So You Think You’d Survive and the just barely associated with weather Fat Guys in the Woods. I wish that I was making these show titles up. Also, anyone wanna talk about why Jim Cantore is ripped as shit?

That boy is swoll, son.

Whatever my dad is watching/yelling at

My dad likes to watch sports. He also really, really likes to win. But even more than winning, he loves a good, close, down to the wire game, and he loves watching well-funded teams lose (the Yankees, Miami Heat, the Patriots) He also loves seeing any star athletes with big attitudes lose (everyone on the Yankees, everyone on Miami Heat, anyone within a 50 mile radius of Massachusetts) getting eviscerated. His favorite is probably college basketball, but he’ll take any of the big three: Basketball, Football, or the last 10 minutes of any Baseball game. Anytime before then and you’re wasting your time. Seriously, if you weren’t watching the first two hours and forty-five minutes of baseball games, you probably could’ve earned that raise by now. Or, at the very least, you could have called your mother.

My mom doesn’t necessarily like to watch as much as she likes to multitask and ensure that my father doesn’t throw anything large at the television or make any death-threat phone calls he would later regret.

The Cosby Show

Okay, okay, before I get in on the Cosby Show, and everyone wants to chat about pills and waitresses, let me just quote Chris Rock in saying “I don’t know what to say. What do you say? I hope it’s not true. That’s all you can say. I really do. I grew up on Cosby. I love Cosby, and I just hope it’s not true.”

I, too, grew up on some mad Cosby. My mom barely knows how to work the remotes (yes, plural) in our house, and there used to be written instructions for her by the side of the couch in case she EVER wanted to watch TV by herself. It was so rare that she watched TV by herself that she forgot EVERY TIME how the damn thing worked.

My mom memorized the number for Nickelodeon because she didn’t want to flip through the channels. Most of the other channels frightened her. I completely understand. Imagine that you’re an alien who has never seen TV before (not far off the mark for describing my mother) and then all of a sudden you’re watching The View or anything on Spike TV. You would never recover. It would be like the scene in The 5th Element when Leeloo finally decided to casually search the term “War” on the interwebs.

I’m with you, mom. Stick with The Cosby Show.