I said, “how was your weekend with Dad and Roz?” “’K,” Amy replied, without taking her eyes off the TV screen. Ben was even more engrossed and didn’t say anything. Greg had dropped the kids off a couple of hours ago and now they were watching Scooby-Doo in their pj’s and drinking bedtime cocoa. Amy was sitting cross-legged on the floor, about two feet from the TV. “Hon, please move back from the screen. You’ll ruin your eyes.” Ever since the kids were old enough to watch TV, those words had been my mantra. I often wondered whether there was any scientific evidence that sitting too close to the TV affected one’s eyesight. When I was little, my mother would utter similarly dire warnings: “Sophie, darling, please don’t pick your nose. Your nostrils will stretch.” I took no notice, but in my teenage years her words came back to haunt me and I started examining my nose in the mirror to check if my childhood booger excavations had caused my nostrils to spread.
