Kelly Poe Wilson

Back when we were still in the middle of the great cartoon controversy of 2006, I saw a great image: it was a picture of a Syrian mother stomping on a Danish flag; I could tell she was a mother because she had her two-year-old in tow. And, I could tell that she was the mother (and not the babysitter, or the aunt, or the preschool teacher) because, when I say she had her toddler “in tow”, I mean that in the most literal sense: she was pulling this kid along the top of the flag like she was trying to pull a ‘56 Chevy out of a ditch. It was a still photo, but I’m guessing, judging by the level of grief and resistance on the boy’s face, and the level of determination and frustration on the mother’s face, that this kid’s feet hadn’t touched the ground since they left the house that morning. In fact, if, by some strange turn of events, this kid ever ends up someday running for President of Denmark (or Prime Minister, or Great Dane–whatever they call it there), I’ll bet he ends up using the Bill Clinton defense to justify his “youthful flag-stomping experimentation”: “Yes, I tried Danish flag-stomping once, but, you know, my feet never actually touched it.”

The photo also didn’t show whether there were any other flags being stomped on at the same venue, but frankly I would be quite surprised to find out that there wasn’t in fact, a virtual hootenanny of flag stomping going on that day. Think about it: what busy mother would take a two-year-old all the way downtown just to stomp on one lousy flag? Like mothers everywhere, this one was probably in the midst of a grand multitask, and that Danish flag was probably the third or fourth in a long line of flags they had traipsed across that morning before they got to the rest of their chores. If you looked at the picture closely enough you could almost see the mother’s lips forming the words, “Ok, stomp on Israeli, American, and Danish flags (check, check, check); now I just have to go by the store–we’re out of falafel and yogurt (must remember to get the one with Blue’s Clues on the box this time), pick up Abdullah from football practice–was it my turn to bring the snacks?–and, oh yeah, see if the dry cleaner was able to get that stain out of my new hijab–I should never have worn it to the protest in the first place, those effigy burnings can get so messy…”

Strangely enough, I find this picture to be very comforting. While it’s true that it reminds me yet again of the vast divide separating those of us who value freedom of speech over religious piety, it also–when I see that all-too-familiar harassed look in that other mother’s eyes–reminds me of all that we have in common. What mother has never dragged her unwilling and ungrateful children to some cultural “event” (whether you define “cultural event” as a flag-burning or viewing the remains of King Tut is up to you), only to have them act like they are being asked to walk over hot coals? And, as a corollary to this, what mother hasn’t thereafter given up on “culture” altogether, only to be chastised for it in later years? I can just hear that little Syrian boy complaining ten years from now:

Boy: “You never take me anywhere.”

Mother: “What are you talking about? What about that time we went to stomp on the Danish flag? Don’t you remember? You started acting all crazy and running around, and the next thing I knew you were over in the corner trying to stomp on the Syrian flag–oh it was so embarrassing”–

Boy: “Why were we stomping on the Danish flag?”

Mother (still thinking about her humiliation): “Hmm? Oh, who knows? We were always stomping on some flag back then; it was the fad…”

And as his mother launches into her verbal stroll down memory lane, the boy will roll his eyes and go back to playing his Game Boy. Just, I am sure, like our kids will do.

If all goes as planned, then by the time you are reading this scientists will already know what, exactly, is contained within the capsules of “comet dust” they recently retrieved after a six year journey through the solar system. I can just imagine what they will be saying upon opening this interstellar time capsule: “Does this speck of dust contain the answers to the creation of the universe?”; “Is this an element previously unknown on Earth?”; and, finally, “Who had the croissant?” I can’t help them with the answers to the first two questions, but I’m pretty sure that the answer to the third is: “Uh, sorry: that would be my daughter, Clementine.”

It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find out that, perhaps after realizing that the house and car no longer presented a big enough challenge, Clementine had, in fact, managed to spread pieces of her last croissant over all of Creation. I say “Creation” because what Clementine can do with a croissant–or, for that matter, what Clementine can do with almost any piece of food–is nothing short of miraculous; in fact, it’s no coincidence that no one has been able to make food spread so far since Jesus did his little bit with the loaves and the fishes. Of course, one minor (but important) distinction between what Jesus did and what Clementine does is that, with Jesus, the end result is that everyone gets something to eat. With Clementine, the end result is that everyone needs to go to the dry cleaners (a miracle worthy of praise only for those in the business–but who knows?–maybe all of the world’s dry cleaners have altars to St. Clementine set up in the backs of their shops).

Also unlike Jesus, it is never Clementine’s intent to spread her food around; she’s not sharing, that’s just how she eats. I know this to be true because I have seen how her other much-loved foods–foods she would never willingly share, like chocolate cake, cookies and chicken nuggets–all receive the same Hellraiser treatment–one minute they’re whole and intact in front of her on the table, and the next it’s as if they’ve been ripped apart by a thousand tiny hooks.

Of course, all of this is pure speculation on my part: I’ve never actually seen the destruction myself, only the results. If I really needed to see it then I think I’d need stop action photography to capture what is happening between the placing of the bowl of spaghetti and parmesan cheese in front of her and the final result: a cheese outline of Clementine on the floor behind her, as if Pompeii had been destroyed not by Mt. Vesuvius, but by Mount Chef Boyardee. (Which reminds me: the other questions the comet dust scientists will be asking themselves is: “What smells like feet?”)

If this is allowed to continue the future of our space program may very well be in jeopardy; therefore, in the interest of protecting the scientific community’s research data (and my new living room rugs), I have recently issued a fatwa in my house against the unholy removal of food from the kitchen or dining room; if that doesn’t work then my next step will be to insist that every single box of crackers, carton of milk and banana in the house be attached to the kitchen garbage can via a one foot chain of the sort you used to find in banks (now you just find a notice stating: Why Are You Bothering Us With This When You Could Just Do It Online; Can’t You See We’re Busy?”). This chain would only allow the consumption of food to take place in a 12 inch circle around said garbage can. And if that doesn’t work, then I’ll have no other choice but to go to Plan “C”: only allowing Clementine to eat at the bottom of a large pit dug at the far end of our back yard, one that has to be filled in again immediately upon the completion of her meal Although, given her particularly well-honed food distribution skills, the end result of this would probably just be that future scientists will end up asking themselves: “Who had the mac’n’cheese–and why is it all covered in dirt?”

Back before I had children (B.C.), if I had walked in on a movie that featured several dewy-eyed children being terrorized by a deep, angry voice shouting “GET OUT!”, I would have assumed that I had walked in on an Amityville Horror-style horror movie. Now that I do have children, however, I would know instantly that I had not walked in on a horror film at all, but instead had obviously stumbled upon some sort of a documentary about modern family life, and that what I was witnessing was not, in fact, a case of demonic possession (much), but rather the typical, everyday reaction of a mother faced with her third vacation day in a row.

I have seen vacation days from both sides now: even though I grew up in Phoenix, where, it’s true we didn’t have any snow days, we did have something that, at least as far as parents are concerned, is much worse: we had summer. (If you think it’s hard to throw children out into three feet of snow just wait until you try to throw them out into 112 degrees of heat. At least you can play in snow–all you can do with 112 degrees is creep along from one shady spot to another, like a gigantic, miserable lizard.)

Not that my mother let that stop her. In fact, I can still distinctly recall the sequence of events that led to our annual eviction: usually around the second full week of vacation, which also happened to coincide with the second full week of watching my sister and myself wrestle furiously on the floor in front of the television (this was before remote controls) to determine whether we were going to watch a third rerun of the Bionic Woman (her choice) or a fifteenth rerun of Wild, Wild, West (mine), my mother would lunge for the phone book and start frantically dialing summer day programs. Usually the only ones left would be the awful ones where you had to stand outside all day, like “Archery for the Disinterested” and “Intermediate Hop-Scotch”. (I also seem to remember a course entitled “Painting Mr. Baker’s House”, although my mother swears that this never happened–it was, she says, all a delusion–brought on, I am sure, by heatstroke.)

At the time I remember being deeply resentful at being pried away from my television coma, but now that I have children of my own I understand completely. After our most recent four-day weekend, and after enduring my children’s twice a minute requests to play another three hours of Game Cube (“Can I play now?” “No.” “Can I play now?” “No.” “Can I play now?” “No.”), I, too, would have signed my kids up for classes with names like “Introduction to Breaking Bottles on the Railroad Tracks” and “History of Things Found in My Pocket”, if only it would have gotten them out of the house.

I’m sure that it has always been this way: someday archaeologists will find a cave drawing somewhere in France that shows a big stick figure using a spear to chase two little stick figures away from their spot in front of the fire, where they had just spent the last twenty minutes noisily and violently contesting over who got to be the next one to throw a log on the fire. (Not shown would be how, in the midst of the tussle, the cave children somehow managed to actually break the fire, or their mother’s exasperated shout of, “You kids could bust a mammoth!” In art, some things are just so obvious that there isn’t any need to show them.)

In the same spirit, I’m also sure that, in the future, we’ll see space stations equipped with special “eject” buttons that mothers can push whenever school is shut down because of solar flares and the like. Not that that would be a shock to anyone who had grown up in Phoenix: being tossed out suit-less into the vacuum of space isn’t that much different than being thrown outside into a Phoenix summer without a car–except for the probability that, compared to Phoenix, space will be a little more hospitable, and almost certainly a lot less dull.

Back before I had children (B.C.), if I had walked in on a movie that featured several dewy-eyed children being terrorized by a deep, angry voice shouting “GET OUT!”, I would have assumed that I had walked in on an Amityville Horror-style horror movie. Now that I do have children, however, I would know instantly that I had not walked in on a horror film at all, but instead had obviously stumbled upon some sort of a documentary about modern family life, and that what I was witnessing was not, in fact, a case of demonic possession (much), but rather the typical, everyday reaction of a mother faced with her third vacation day in a row.

I have seen vacation days from both sides now: even though I grew up in Phoenix, where, it’s true we didn’t have any snow days, we did have something that, at least as far as parents are concerned, is much worse: we had summer. (If you think it’s hard to throw children out into three feet of snow just wait until you try to throw them out into 112E of heat. At least you can play in snow–all you can do with 112E is creep along from one shady spot to another, like a gigantic, miserable lizard.)

Not that my mother let that stop her. In fact, I can still distinctly recall the sequence of events that led to our annual eviction: usually around the second full week of vacation, which also happened to coincide with the second full week of watching my sister and myself wrestle furiously on the floor in front of the television (this was before remote controls) to determine whether we were going to watch a third rerun of the Bionic Woman (her choice) or a fifteenth rerun of Wild, Wild, West (mine), my mother would lunge for the phone book and start frantically dialing summer day programs. Usually the only ones left would be the awful ones where you had to stand outside all day, like “Archery for the Disinterested” and “Intermediate Hop-Scotch”. (I also seem to remember a course entitled “Painting Mr. Baker’s House”, although my mother swears that this never happened–it was, she says, all a delusion–brought on, I am sure, by heatstroke.)

At the time I remember being deeply resentful at being pried away from my television coma, but now that I have children of my own I understand completely. After our most recent four-day weekend, and after enduring my children’s twice a minute requests to play another three hours of Game Cube (“Can I play now?” “No.” “Can I play now?” “No.” “Can I play now?” “No.”), I, too, would have signed my kids up for classes with names like “Introduction to Breaking Bottles on the Railroad Tracks” and “History of Things Found in My Pocket”, if only it would have gotten them out of the house.

I’m sure that it has always been this way: someday archaeologists will find a cave drawing somewhere in France that shows a big stick figure using a spear to chase two little stick figures away from their spot in front of the fire, where they had just spent the last twenty minutes noisily and violently contesting over who got to be the next one to throw a log on the fire. (Not shown would be how, in the midst of the tussle, the cave children somehow managed to actually break the fire, or their mother’s exasperated shout of, “You kids could bust a mammoth!” In art, some things are just so obvious that there isn’t any need to show them.)

In the same spirit, I’m also sure that, in the future, we’ll see space stations equipped with special “eject” buttons that mothers can push whenever school is shut down because of solar flares and the like. Not that that would be a shock to anyone who had grown up in Phoenix: being tossed out suit-less into the vacuum of space isn’t that much different than being thrown outside into a Phoenix summer without a car–except for the probability that, compared to Phoenix, space will be a little more hospitable, and almost certainly a lot less dull.

As a board member for the Flagstaff Children’s Museum, it has been my pleasure for the past four years to help promote our annual All Ages Coloring Contest; with every passing year I am amazed anew at the wit and creativity displayed by our community’s adults and children alike in taking a simple line drawing and turning it into a piece of art. My involvement in this endeavor has been both an honor and a joy; inevitably, though, there always comes a point during the promotion of the coloring contest when someone will ask me the question I dread most: how are my children’s entries are coming along? At this point I am always forced to admit that, actually, I don’t allow crayons in my house. This confession is usually greeted with stony silence, soon followed by a quizzical look that clearly says: what kind of a parent doesn’t allow their children to have crayons?

What kind of a parent, indeed? It’s not like I’m one of those parents who has an all-white living room furnished in Swedish Modern (frankly I don’t even remember what color my living room is supposed to be, and the closest my house ever gets to Swedish Modern is when the Ikea catalog finds its way from the bathroom to the coffee table). Generally speaking, in fact, I have no problem with the filth and detritus of childhood–the cookie crumb-encrusted couch cushions; the layer of fast-food containers in the back seat of the car dating back to the Pleistocene era–but there is just something about crayons with which I cannot deal.

They haven’t always been my enemy: when my children were smaller I would buy them all sorts and sizes of crayons: fat ones, thin ones, glitter ones, neon ones; in quantities ranging from the tiny travel packs of the four primary colors all the way up to the jumbo sixty-four box (with its own sharpener). At some point, however, I came to the realization that, in the hands of my children at least, a crayon clearly qualified as a WMD.

It’s like the crayons are possessing them: I remember times back in the days when crayons were not yet verboten when I would walk past Clyde’s room and hear what sounded to me suspiciously like Clyde taking orders from the burnt sienna.

“You want me to draw what with you? Where? Oh no, I couldn’t…”

And then, the next thing I knew my freshly painted dining room would look like a cross between a prehistoric French cave and a high school bathroom. It was always the same: time and time again I would relent and allow more crayons into my house (usually after a trip to some restaurant where I would watch my children coloring beatifically within the lines on their placemats), only to find that, once through our own front door my children’s unplottable switch had somehow been flipped from “good” to “evil”, and I would soon be finding the evidence of Clyde’s “blue period” (or “red, yellow, and a little bit of green period”) on his bedroom walls.

Thankfully, of course, with the Children’s Museum coloring contest, the entries don’t have to be done in crayon at all: in fact, one of Clyde’s most inspired entries was his first, when he decorated it entirely in food stains and bodily fluids (he was five months old). Some of the other entries I have seen over the years have included poster paint, papier mache and even lint, so I suppose there is still hope for my children to get their crayon-less entries in on time. Although, come to think about it, I’m not too happy about finding any of those things on my walls, either.

(The Flagstaff Children’s Museum Fourth Annual All Ages Coloring Contest, with base drawing provided by local artist Tisha Cazel, will be accepting entries in food, plywood, and even crayon from now until March 10. Entry forms can be picked up and dropped off at any of the following: Brandy’s, New Frontiers Marketplace, and Pay-N-Take. All winning entries will be on display at the Coconino Center for the Arts following the public reception and awards ceremony also held at the CCA on Wednesday, March 15, from 5-7 pm.)

Since my children were born nearly five years apart, I often find myself forgetting the different horrors associated with each particular age; I was shocked anew at the creepy, unnatural children they have on Barney (how do they conduct auditions for Barney anyway–do they wait outside the back door of Zoom and scoop up their rejects, or what?) and horrified all over again the first time my child came out of some relative’s all white living room sans diaper; but by far the item that tops all others in the “I can’t believe I forgot how horrible this was” department has been “Candyland”.

I know, it hardly seems possible: how could anyone who has spent the hours I have wandering hopelessly through the gumdrop forest forget what it’s like to be trapped in that interminable game, a game so tortuously unending that, were Quentin Tarantino to ever “guest direct” his own version, would come complete with a loaded gun for the “just kill me now” strategy. However, like I said, there is a five year gap between my children, and five years will do strange things to a person’s memory. It must: why else would I have given in to Clyde’s pleading and bought him his very own edition of “Candyland”?

It’s true, of course, that most children’s games are annoying in their own special ways: there is the Ducky game, a game that “quacks” nonstop at a volume only slightly lower than that of your average Metallica concert; the “Don’t Break the Ice” game, which takes ten minutes to set up and thirty seconds to play; and, of course, “Twister,” a game that, aside from it’s adult counterpart involving alcohol and nakedness, is just an excuse to beat up on your siblings. None of these games, however, can even come close to the sheer monotony of “Candyland”.

“Candyland” is a game that neither requires nor rewards the use of strategy and skill: no matter how smoothly you shepherd your little game piece down the colorful candy road or how expertly you flip over the next card on the deck, all it takes is one card and you are right back at the beginning with all the other “Candyland” dilettantes and poseurs. Not only that, but with “Candyland” you can’t even smile and pretend it’s all part of some grand strategy: “Candyland” is a game so dull it even eliminates bluffing. (Think about it: when was the last time you saw a big Vegas “Candyland” tournament on ESPN 43?) There are other kids’ games where this is true, of course, but at least with games like “Sorry” and “Life” you can arrange it so that if you aren’t going to be the one who wins, then certain other people will still definitely lose. With “Candyland” you don’t even have that to look forward to: it’s just a matter of drawing one card after another until someone finally makes it through to the end.

And yet, despite its complete randomness, it still manages to be one of those infuriating games where the only person who cares about winning at all (the child) is also the only person who never does. (And believe me: it doesn’t help to point out that statistically, over time, every player has the same chance of coming in first; few people are less interested in statistical probabilities than a distraught four-year-old who has just lost his third game in a row.)

Which brings me the biggest problem with candyland: it’s almost impossible to cheat at. No matter how carefully you “arrange” the cards ahead of time, those sticky toddler fingers make it almost a certainty that you will be the one sailing through Lollipop Lake while they’re still languishing in the Molasses Swamp.

It’s just lucky for me I guess that the suppression of the “Candyland” memory also coincided with the suppression of another game memory: that no game, ever, can be completely returned to its box. This means that as each card and token drifts away from “the herd” and is scooped up and maneuvered into the trash, I move one step closer to “Candyland” freedom.

Now if I could just do the same things with those creepy kids on Barney.

Out of all the characters on Sesame Street I would have to say that my least favorite one is The Count: he has all the makings of an obsessive/compulsive. (I strongly suspect that the whole counting thing is just the tip of the iceberg; just because they don’t show his excessive hand-washing, or the fact that he can never leave the house because he has to keep going back and checking to make sure that the oven is off doesn’t mean it’s not there.) But even if The Count didn’t have any other OCD stuff going on, the counting thing alone is plenty annoying. Think about it: how obnoxious would it be to hang out with someone that counted all the time? As it so happens, I can tell you how obnoxious it would be: very; the reason I can tell you this with complete certainty is because lately, wherever I go, I seem to be surrounded by parents that count.

You know the ones I’m talking about, the parents that preface every punishment with a countdown. In principal, of course, this is a very sound idea: you give the little monsters a bit of warning before you pull out the big guns; and, in principal, I’m sure that this method works very well. (I must admit that personally, however, I prefer the Old Testament method of discipline: swooping down like the hand of God to deliver both benedictions and punishments in a random, chaotic spree. Not only does it keep everybody on their toes, but it also ensures them of always having good stories to tell in group therapy). Alas, the same thing cannot be said for counting, because while the counting method may work very well in principal, when it is put into practice it kind of sucks.

There seems to be three schools of thought for the counting method. The first school is obviously some sort of a Waldorf school, because in this school the parents have either forgotten or are forbidden to mention the number that comes after two. In an effort, perhaps, to disguise this lack on their parts, they count to two so slowly that Supreme Court vacancies can arise and be filled without these parents ever even coming close to approaching the number three. Their countdowns go something like this: “O-o-o-o-n-n-n-n-e-e-e-e–(crickets chirping)–t-t-t-t-w-w-w-w-o-o-o-o-(more crickets, cobwebs form)”.

The second school of thought appears to be one with a more classical approach, seeing as how these parents have made a vow (clearly inspired by Zeno’s Paradox) never to reach their destination. Their countdowns, appropriately enough, go like this:(“One…two…two and a half…two and three-quarters…”.

The final school is made up of the parents who, perhaps like The Count himself, become so caught up in the counting that they seem to forget that the whole point was to eventually reach an end. (I don’t know how their countdowns go: I usually make my escape as soon as they get started; I strongly suspect though that these parents are probably the same people who, as children, insisted on singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” during every family vacation.)

The one thing that all of these counting schools have in common is that they all produce children who hear the order to “stop that right now” as “stop that whenever you feel like it.” I sometimes wonder how this will translate into their adult lives: will they feel betrayed that the cop didn’t count to three before he wrote them a speeding ticket? Or will it all end up on a positive note: will they be blessed with infinite patience and forgiveness for the transgressions of others? That would certainly be interesting. I can hear them now: “Ok dear, when I get to three I want you to stop doing that with the mailman, ok? One…two–come on now, you really need to start thinking about stopping–two and a half…

When my daughter Clementine came home from school the other day with red, raw hands I couldn’t help but ask her why she hadn’t worn any gloves to school that morning. Glaring at me briefly, she shot back, in a tone rife with accusation and reproach, “Because I don’t have any, that’s why”. Ah yes, how could I forget? In an effort to save enough money this year to make a down payment on the gas bill I had cut back my glove purchasing to the point where, parsimoniously, I had only bought ten pair.

This isn’t as extravagant as it sounds: I always buy the cheapest kind of gloves I can find, usually those stretchy ones that are marketed as “magic gloves”. (In the beginning, I thought that this moniker meant that the gloves would fit anybody; now I know that what it really means is that they will disappear like “magic”–an especially crappy kind of magic, if you ask me). By only getting the cheap ones, I am able to afford something like a dozen pair for each of my children (or, as was the case this year, ten); this makes it all the more frustrating that they haven’t had a pair between them since October.

This is especially hard for me to understand, because, I’m the type of person who once owned the same pair of gloves for over ten years; even then I didn’t lose them, but rather retired them when they eventually fell apart. I am also still in possession of the backpack I got my freshman year of college, as well as various other assorted pieces of “vintage” clothing. My kids hate hearing these stories of lovingly preserved t-shirts and hats, but I can’t help but tell them–especially when it comes time to leave for school and once again the only things they can find to put on their hands are a pair of rainbow-colored “toe socks” and an old hand puppet.

“You see this jacket?” I’ll say, pulling on my favorite piece of denim. “High school graduation present.” At this Clementine will roll her eyes and mutter under her breath about my complete lack of fashion sense and “nasty, old, worn out clothes”. She will rebuff my argument that the “distressed” look is back in, adding that what my jacket is exhibiting is not “distress”, but, in fact,“panic”. “No matter,” I’ll say, “At least I still have a jacket. And gloves.”

Sometimes I try to tell myself that there is a logical reason for their glove vendetta: maybe they have found some new translation of Nostradamus that revealed to them that, in the very near future, gloves would no longer be necessary. (Maybe a vague warning about global warming along the lines of :When mighty oaks/are replaced with shrubs/ it’s good-bye beach house/and so long, gloves).

Or maybe it’s simply a ploy to get rid of gloves that aren’t “cool” enough; I’m not that old that I don’t remember “losing” the Fonzie sweatshirt my mom got me in the fourth grade. The problem with this theory, however, is that the gloves I buy aren’t uncool, at least not when they’re worn in their proper pairs (I will admit there is a little something funny about wearing a “Hulk” glove on one hand and a “Princess” glove on the other).

Maybe it’s just my paranoia, but I think that the REAL reason behind the disappearing gloves is a highly organized world-wide plot to get me to embrace the idea of a Wal-Mart Supercenter. I’ve always said that I could never see the reasoning behind selling groceries and clothing in the same store (barring, of course, those rare but unfortunate instances when you really need to buy some toilet paper, Milk of Magnesia, and a new pair of pants right now), but, with our incredibly shrinking glove supply I am starting to see the advantages of making out a shopping list that reads: milk, eggs, bread, and gloves.

Sound too far-fetched? Maybe, but then again, I can remember when I thought the idea of comparing buying cheese puffs to a Nazi book burning was far-fetched, too.

Lately it seems that the most common theme in parenting “how-to” guides is the “how to limit your children’s media time” theme. (By “media” I am assuming they are referring to TV, computers and video games, although for all I know they could be referring to time spent reading People magazine or camping out six weeks early in order to be the first in line at the next Star Wars installment; both of these are habits that even without the prompting of a parenting expert I would discourage in my children–a child who can rattle off Clay Aiken’s astrological sign and/or quote George Lucas’ dialogue verbatim can only be headed down the dreaded path of theater major).

But assuming, for the time being, that these experts are referring not to the sort of habits that lead to knowing all the words to Broadway musicals and/or dressing in nothing but black, but rather to the more innocuous sort of habits that lead to mirthful glee at the prospect of an opponent’s decapitation, every parenting guide seems to be stuck in the rut of only offering new ideas for how parents can keep track of the time: some call for egg timers and hour glasses, and some suggest having your children “buy” their media time with an equal amount of reading time, but none of them, to my great surprise, offer up what surely must be the easiest solution of all: owning crappy stuff. This method (which, yes, I invented myself), is not only inexpensive and highly effective, but also offers something that no other child-rearing book seems to find necessary: it can be carried out by parents in it’s entirety without them ever once having to get up off of the couch.

Here’s how it works: if you are worried that your kids are watching too much television, simply cling desperately to an outdated 10-year-old TV set that renders all of their favorite actors’ skin tones into colors somewhere between Oompa-Loompa orange and violently seasick green. Better yet, refuse to pay for cable, so that the only channels that come in clearly are the ones showing nothing but claymation Bible stories and Spanish telenovelas.

The same method works for computer time as well. If you are worried that your kids are spending too much time online, then try owning a computer so slow that the time bar for how much longer a program needs to load includes geologic time periods. For extra protection, make sure the mouse is really old and cranky, and that the computer routinely crashes during the “good part” of anything.

Video games are trickier, since it seems that some children will happily play the dullest, most meaningless game for hours on end; it’s hard to imagine that the same child who can gaze intently at a hand-held soccer game could ever be bored into picking up a good book, but trust me: it’s possible. Remember “Pong”, the video game version of table tennis where two blips of light bat another blip back and forth across the screen with all the finesse and speed of a tugboat pushing a barge into place on the Mississippi? Even the most devoted gamer would find it hard to fight against the soporific effects of a level one game of “Pong”.

As a matter of fact, I can still remember receiving “Pong” myself one Christmas when I was nine and had been begging for my very own Atari; after a few squinty-eyed attempts at watching the blips shimmy across the screen (we had no vertical hold), I was ready to pack it in by the time New Year’s had rolled around. It was terrible–even worse than trying to play a “computer” game on my stepfather’s TRS-80, a computer so old it took 45 minutes to load programs by cassette. Really, when you think about it, it was a whole lot easier back then to read a book than it was to…hey. Ok, so maybe I didn’t invent this method for reducing media time–but, trust me–it definitely works.

I don’t want to scare anyone, but it’s here: Girl Scout cookie season. Considering the fact that I am just now able to fit into my jeans after the havoc last year’s cookie season played upon my butt, this is, for me, very bad news indeed.

Usually I don’t have a problem with cookies (my weaknesses run towards all thing fried), but Girl Scout cookies really are a breed apart. For one thing, they’re really, really good; and for another–they’re in my house. Yes, my real problem with Girl Scout cookies is the delivery system: me, which means that all of those cookies that other people have ordered from my daughter, Clementine, have to pass through my house before they can be delivered to their rightful consumers. Hopefully, they will only be visiting my house briefly–milliseconds would be optimal–but if not, if they linger, they run the risk of falling victim to “the opener”.

My son, Clyde, is “the opener”. In a way this is my fault: when I think back to his first few Christmases, and how I laughed and applauded in encouragement every time he managed to pull a single ribbon off of one of his presents, I could easily kill myself. But honestly, who could know then that something he showed so little aptitude for in the beginning would become, in the end, his life’s ultimate passion? But that’s exactly what has happened, and now, Clyde is the Opener. He opens the mail. He opens other people’s presents (especially after I have just finished wrapping them). He opens boxes of spaghetti, bags of charcoal, and tins of loose tea. He also, to my great horror, opens Girl Scout cookies.

Not the Girl Scout cookies I have hidden in the cupboard for my late night Do-Si-Do fix, nor even the ones I have hidden under my desk for my mid-morning Thin Mint inspiration, but rather, (unfortunately), the boxes upon boxes of cookies that are stacked all over the house waiting to be delivered to other people. And not just one or two boxes, but all of them. I’ll never forget how this time last year I came around a corner only to find Clyde sitting on the floor surrounded by a pile of open Tag-a-Long and Lemon Cooler boxes taller than his head. It was not so much knowing that I would have to replace them all that did me in (at three bucks a box I wasn’t too worried about breaking the bank), but knowing that I would now be living in the same house with hundreds of loose cookies.

As everyone knows, a cookie, while still in its unopened box, is mostly harmless. It’s like a grenade that hasn’t had its pin pulled or a bullet that hasn’t been fired. Sure, the potential for harm is there, but for now, and for as long as it remains inviolate, everyone is safe. Open the box, however, and all bets are off. Open twenty boxes, and, well, you might as well plan on spending the rest of the year wearing your husband’s old sweat pants.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s not like I have no self-control; in fact, I have a box of cookies in my cupboard right now that are in no danger whatsoever of my molesting them. Of course, they’re also in no danger of being molested by my husband, the kids, the neighbor’s kids and any stray dogs that might wander through the house–I think they’re some pre-Chernobyl Ukrainian sand tart I bought at the 99¢ store a couple of years ago–but still, the point is I can leave them alone. (You’d be surprised how seldom you have to buy cookies if all you ever get are brands like Carob Clusters and Prune Newtons).

Unfortunately, it is this very proclivity for buying the world’s cheapest cookies that has put me in twice the danger that a normal person–one who has been desensitized by years of Oreos and Chips Ahoys–is in when really good cookies like Samoas come into the house. Especially when they are laying around in open boxes by the caseful.