Of Mixers and Messages

I was just watching Paula Dean on the Food Network.  She's preparing a low-fat lemon cheesecake (it looked very yummy and I don't like cheesecake) and her adult sons are helping her.  While one prepares the crust, the other is mixing the filling.  When the mixer is finished, Paula points out a tip to her son and the TV audience.  She instructs him to set the speed to low, then slowly pull the beaters out, and that will clean the beaters off.  Well, duh!  I've known that forever.  That was the first thing I learned from my mother about using a mixer.  I thought everyone knew that trick.
Time and time again I forget how simple little things I learned as a child are not necessarily common knowledge.  And I realize just how naive I was back then, thinking that everyone knew the same stuff I knew.  It probably had a lot to do with the television shows we watched then.  Shows like 'Leave It To Beaver', 'Father Knows Best' 'The Patty Duke Show', etc.  The values were pretty much the same, and they reinforced the daily lessons we learned at home, at school, in life.  But, truth is, I guess not everyone watched or liked those shows.  I know that because of the behavior I saw on the playground and in class (or maybe they were just imitating Eddy).  Television did influence us...just as it does now.  Maybe that's why I really don't like watching television like I once did.  Overall the storyline and quality of most shows just leaves me feeling flat.  Unfulfilled. 
And sometimes, I worry about that and how TV programming today is affecting our youth.

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