Lori Falce: Facts, ideas and watching TV with mom

Because my mother is a nurse, I have spent years having my television and movie viewing punctuated by huffing and heckling.

“Those bed rails would never be like that.” “They would never inject that in a bicep.” “That’s not how you draw blood.”

I may have rolled my eyes a lot and shushed her hard during “ER,” but today I know the signs of a stroke, the right way to handle a burn and how to properly apply a pressure dressing.

My son is learning different things.

I am in the midst of helping his Scouts BSA troop navigate the information they need to earn the communications merit badge. That means learning about how we talk and how we listen, what we say and why. One aspect of that is attending a government meeting and reporting back to me what happened.

Coronavirus means this is happening remotely, since that’s how most government meetings are happening right now. For my son, being immersed in government and politics is nothing new and I feel a little bad about that.

As my mother has a love-hate relationship with medical shows, I am professionally drawn to governmental coverage online and on television. C-SPAN, PCN, legislative hearings and blustering votes — my son is used to me talking back to them all loudly and with the same kind of backseat commentary I tend to offer when watching the Steelers or Penn State football.

Where “St. Elsewhere” and “Chicago Hope” prompted conversations about science with my mom, watching congressional antics and presidential speeches has led to discussions about history, law and legacy with my son. This week has been a weeklong immersion in the Democratic National Convention. Next week will be the same with the GOP’s nomination extravaganza.

But I don’t want my son’s takeaway to be about what I say someone is doing right or wrong. I want hearings and speeches to be the start of our own debates about what is happening and why.

I don’t want my son to agree with my opinions because they are my opinions. I want him to pay attention to what is happening. I want him to understand. I want him to ask questions and form ideas and then ask more questions and change his mind. I want him to challenge my ideas and make me think about my own positions.

That’s how everyone should come to important issues — like they are science experiments that need hypothesis and careful observation.

If we did that, things like the presidential debates might be what they were in 1858 when Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas faced off over a Senate seat on slavery, abolition, emancipation and equality.

My mother wasn’t wrong about how to properly do a spinal tap or administer medication. But it’s easier to be right about a fact than an idea.

I hope that one day, my son will be able to say he learned the difference between the two from arguing over TV politics with his mother.