I remember my mom explicitly asking me not to watch was Real People. I don't remember exactly what she said, but I know she didn't really forbid me from watching it; she just said she and my dad would prefer I didn't. I think she felt it was mean-spirited (which it was).

She also strongly disapproved of Hogan's Heroes, but I know we did watch it at least sometimes. Possibly when she wasn't home.

I was into my teens before HBO hit big, and older than that when videos really hit. So my parents didn't have too much trouble with anything I saw on TV. When I was 11 or 12, I started staying up on Friday nights to watch reruns of Perry Mason, starring Raymond Burr.

They also didn't really censor my reading much, which meant I read a lot that they would have probably disapproved of had they known. When I was about 15 or 16, my mother had a minor freak-out when she found me reading a Jacqueline Susann novel. I had the good sense not to tell her that I didn't learn anything from it that I hadn't already learned from reading The Godfather.

They also didn't really censor my reading much

Yeah, no reading censoring took place. Well, except of the put that book down right this minute and take out the trash! sort. I think I read Madame Bovary at 12. And Anna Karenina, and Vanity Fair. (they were in a collection my dad bought, so they are all sort of tied together in my head.)

Yeah, in my house, the TV was on lockdown, but I could read anything I wanted.

Funny story about what scares kids: Went to see Star Wars when it came out. I remember the spaceship coming across the screen, everyone saying 'ooooh", and then the airlock blew and Darth Vader came through. I screamed and got under my seat.

My mother and grandmother once went to see a play and ended up sitting separately. My mother enjoyed it but was glad she hadn't been sitting next to her mother. My grandmother enjoyed it but said she was glad her mother wasn't there. I think you pretty much never get over that.

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch The Flintstones - not because of the dinosaurs so much as because it gave the impression that the economic system had always been capitalism.

I'm pretty sure my parents were the only people in the neighbourhood to teach the kids they babysat about the concept of "property is theft".

Regarding scariness: my mother had to take my sister (RahRah) out of The Empire Strikes Back because she was terrified of ... Yoda.

1. I was scared of the Disney Black Hole movie as a kid. I was lame.

2. I had little to no censorship of anything watched in the home or read. Hence the reading of Erica Jong novels in, like, 5th grade.

3. My friend's father wouldn't let her watch "The Facts of Life" because he thought it was dirty. Also the love boat. I think he never actually watched The Facts of Life.

4. I lived with both grandparents and my mother in a very small house in which the upstairs was unbareably hot to sleep in in the summer. My gradma and I both tended to stay up all night. Which is how I ended up watching Basic Instinct with her.

ETA:

I was also terrified of Grover, because he sang I'm so Blue and it made me tooo sad. I think it was my first experience of "watch from the hall"

I wonder if I could set up an auto-response in my email so that everything that comes in, at least from certain people, gets hit with "did you check that on snopes?" before I have to go and do it myself.

When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to watch The Flintstones - not because of the dinosaurs so much as because it gave the impression that the economic system had always been capitalism.

Huh. I just can't imagine my parents... no.

We weren't allowed to watch Monty Python or SNL. I was also not allowed to read comics, especially Mad Magazine.

My Dad thought we watched too much TV, so for a while we were only allowed to watch TV on certain days of the week.

Funny story about what scares kids: Went to see Star Wars when it came out. I remember the spaceship coming across the screen, everyone saying 'ooooh", and then the airlock blew and Darth Vader came through. I screamed and got under my seat.

Mom was really strict but she goofed with that one. "My seven year old does not need to see a movie with WAR right in the title." I didn't see it until the re-release when Empire came out.

My mother and grandmother once went to see a play and ended up sitting separately. My mother enjoyed it but was glad she hadn't been sitting next to her mother. My grandmother enjoyed it but said she was glad her mother wasn't there. I think you pretty much never get over that.

Hee. We once saw a friend of mine off-broadway and naked for several hours. She kept poking my sister in the arm saying, "isn't this funny? Isn't this funny?!?!?!" and my sister finally groweled "Mom, I'm trying to pretend you aren't HERE"