As an afterthought to my last post I began counting the screens in our house then I lost track because I was distracted by one of them. I seriously think this could make an interesting short story.

We have 3 screens in the basement — a television and two monitors for a desktop.

On the main floor we usually have 8 screens — a television in the back room, Clare and Dean’s smart phones, my Nook and 4 laptops.

On the third floor we currently have 2 screens — a television and Andrew’s laptop.

Finally in the attic/office we have 4 screens, all at my work area. My work laptop is attached to an external screen so I can have more room to work. I also have a smartphone and a 7 inch tv connected to a Roku on my desk for distraction while I work on repetitive tagging of PDF files.

So, if I added correctly we have 17 screens in the house right now (not counting my old smartphone in the drawer and various digital cameras around the house). This number may be reduced by 4 in the near future, but why would a family of four need 17 screens? Better yet, why would two people (which we will be once the kids are at college) need 13 screens? I admit to using 3 at a time when I work sometimes — maybe 4 when I check my phone, but I think 6 each is a little much.

When the kids were younger we’d punish them by taking away “screen-time”*. I’m only now beginning to understand what a powerful punishment that was.

*we also established Sundays as “no screen days” — for kids only of course. Man were we mean!