Wanderlust

Tenzin and I realized today that we’ve both developed a sudden desire to move. His is because his job is looking sketchy. Mine is just, well, because. Some of the “because” may have to do with the documentary I saw on people teaching their 5-year-olds to shoot assault weapons. And the feeling that we never really will fit in here without riding 4-wheelers, going to church, and buying one of those handheld video games (the name of which I don’t even know, so that tells you a lot).

A good friend of mine, whose kids are also tortured daily by being deprived of TV, told me she met another woman at a Mom’s Club who ended up having our same “philosophies.” Their eyes met (across a crowded ball pit) while listening to another woman describe her days of getting her kids out of the house — where they watch Elmo — into their new car that’s equipped, thank god, with a DVD player — where they watch Elmo — and then to daycare — where they watch Elmo. “Elmo is their best friend.” I just hope they don’t think he’s died if the power goes out. Anyway, my friend and I were saying that we need some kind of secret password or handshake to meet “others like us.” Because no one wants to say, “Damn, you let your kids watch that much TV?” Or “I’d never get a DVD player in my car — you might as well just give you kid acid.” It’s kind of a social faux pax. So we really could really use the handshake.

Truth be told, our kids are only moderately deprived of media. They probably see about as much as we did when we were kids, and that just happens to be significantly less than their peers. But we’ve found plenty of other fantastic ways to screw them up and give them fodder for future therapy sessions. As my friend says, if you get out of childhood without any stories to tell a therapist, then it wasn’t a very good childhood. So mine are doing just fine.