Justifying Wasting Time

So I've been spending a lot of time recently watching documentaries about people. I'm not sure if I am wasting my time or whether I am actually learning a lot about the world and preparing myself for leaving home and meeting people who are not my family or from this town.

Naturally, I still have standards regarding what documentaries I watch. I've watched all the BBC documentaries that look interesting under the 'family and relationships' and 'lifestyle' sections and have moved on, kind of warily to Channel 4. Obviously this channel is pretty infamous when it comes to stuff like 'the girl born without skin' and 'lets watch people have extreme surgery' but those I avoid like the plague, preferring people's lives and personalities to the inner workings of their digestive systems etc.

Recently, I've watched World's Strictest Parents, The Grandparent Diaries, Underage and Pregnant and My Child's Big Fat Birthday Party on BBC iPlayer, and I like to feel as if I have learnt something. The most shocking of these, in a way, was the birthday party one, because the mother was really excited about the party, whereas her 8-year-old son didn't want all of the fuss and thought that she had gone over the top spending £20,000 on the huge cowboy party when all he really wanted to do was play with his friends in the garden. I actually watched this the day after my birthday party and felt incredibly relieved that my parents had never tried to get me a unicorn, like the 12-year-old girl whose parents stuck a pointy cone on a horse for her party. They could have just gotten her a rhino.

And now I've watched two episodes of How The Other Half Live on Channel 4, guaranteed to make anyone weep uncontrollably at the sight of the little girl from the council estate hugging the little girl from the Sussex mansion and crying because they bought her a new bed. Or the look on the face of the boy who finally got his own bedroom thanks to the wealthy family from Kent.

There, I'm learning about poverty and family life and people and the issues facing society today. My life is like a P.S.H.E lesson without the condoms on bananas. This is clearly what happens to me when there is no school.