Mom and dad prided themselves on the fact that we all ate dinner together as a family. Every night, all four of us: Mom, Dad, my younger brother and me. We would've been, say, 9 and 11 then.
Friday nights would be TV night -- we'd cook frozen pizzas, then popcorn later on (in the Joe Namath popcorn popper I got for Christmas). For what might have been years or merely weeks of Fridays, we'd sit in the library. The Friday line-up was the same for what now seems like ages: M*A*S*H (when it was funny, before it got all Deep and Meaningful), Sanford and Son, and Chico and the Man. We'd finish with ice cream of some sort, then it was "PJ time", and off to bed.
Other than Friday nights, we weren't a TV family, and dinner was at the table. "As God intended," Dad used to joke. We were "C & E's" - Protestants who went to church on Christmas and Easter. Religion was always a good thing, except for the guilt bit. That explained why Dad left the Catholic church when he became an adult - always seemed to make sense to me. Why would God want us all to feel guilty all the time? Of course, I've found a way to generate my own, but I still don't understand where it comes from.