Exactly! My Mom could have easily gotten food stamps, and we could have eaten alot better than we did, but she was too proud, and I ate so many friggin hot dogs/waffles/ramen dinners I finally started eating all three again, 25 plus years later. But, at the time I didn't feel undernourished. We always had milk and bananas. 
Woulda been cool to have a TV though. We didn't have one for a year or so. But, then my Mom probably wouldn't have had time to teach us how to dance. Yeah, we can mashed potato, we can do the twist, and so forth and so on.
We had an old B&W tube TV when I was growing up. After a couple of repair visits by the TV repairman, (imagine that), I took it upon myself to learn how to fix the TV. It was pretty simple. Yank the tubes that didn't have a glowing heater element, run them down to the drug store tube tester and see which one was bad. Buy a replacement for the bad tube and replace it. It kept me entertained because I could watch Icky Twerp and the Three Stooges in the morning before school and the Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday night. I started doing that when I was 6 years old. I was using the old phonograph when I was 4. My mom didn't like it much, but I never hurt anything, scratched a record, etc. Ultimately, she bought me my own little phonograph as a Christmas present one year. I'd listen to Disney stories for hours on end when it was cold, rainy or both.
