Overheard in LA

Wife: “Enjoy this time when the kids are young, because once they’re teenagers they won’t want anything to do with us.”

Me: “Great! Let’s start thinking of ways we can embarrass them in twelve years.”

OK, that was a non-sequitur, but I didn’t have anywhere else to put it, and I still can’t get the twitter gadget to work properly in blogger.

Anyhoo, when you live in LA, especially as a parent, you hear things you most certainly would not hear anywhere else. Here are some things I’ve overheard. I’m a very good listener, when someone isn’t speaking directly to me.

Mother talking to her six year old daughter: “We’re going out for sushi tonight, your favorite!” Judging by the look on her face it was not her favorite. And really, why would it be?

Mother talking to a sales clerk in Macy’s: “My son is shooting a movie tomorrow and he needs to wear plain type clothes” Way to hike up your kid’s resume to the Macy’s clerk. Embarrased to say “My son is an extra”?

Mother to son at daycare: “If you keep acting this way you’re going to get a consequence!” Consequence?! SERIOUSLY?! While I’m against the whole “gonna get a beating” thing, I think we can still call a spade a spade. PUNISHMENT is still a good word, for criminals and for children. Be a parent, not a hippie.

“Sometime I give my son a cupcake in the morning without icing and say it’s a muffin.” This one is so creatively absurd that I had to give the mother some credit. Well done.

What was the dumbest parenting conversation you’ve overheard?

Willy Wonka and Parenting

My daughter has discovered Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Her favorite part is the “blue girl.” “Violet, you’re turning violet, Violet!”

It's always been one of my favorite movies. But watching it now with children adds to the experience. The movie takes on meaning on a whole other level.

I just watched the featurette and it was fascinating. The film was funded by Quaker Oats to promote a candy bar, the Wonka Bar, that had, get this, a design flaw. It melted before it got to store shelves and had to be pulled. So a movie came out to promote a chocolate bar, but there was no chocolate bar. Holy product tie-in fiasco, Batman!

The movie was a bomb when it came out. Parents didn’t like it and found it to be cruel and mean. All those horrible things happening to those kids! They were disappearing, shrinking, being made into giant blueberries! But kids, however, loved it. Here’s the crux of it and this is something the director Mel Stuart and author Roald Dahl knew all along. Kids didn’t find the movie cruel at all. Kids really want boundaries and limits. They don’t really want to do whatever they want. They want to be shown boundaries and they are very much aware of bad behavior and good behavior, regardless of whether they are watching it or engaging in it.

Not only do children want boundaries, they admire the person who gives them to them. That’s why kids never found Willy Wonka scary, while parents did. He’s a big kid himself, but he is also a surrogate parent who tells children where the boundaries are, and what the consequences are for crossing them. And he does it all with candy and a creepy orange skinned rather short workforce. Gene Wilder was simply astonishing in this role, if you go back and really watch him. A sugar coated anarchist with a child’s soul.

Although I will say no one talks about the nightmarish boat scene on the featurette which still is the most disturbing sequence on film in any children’s movie. How Rob Zombie was able to travel back through time and direct that sequence I’ll never know. But I will say I do fast forward through that part and won’t let Bella watch it. I remember it giving me nightmares as a kid. Worms crawling on the face, a chicken getting its head cut off, etc. Someone should have checked the editor’s backpack for his own “candy” before he went into the bay every night.

The book came out in 1964, the movie 1971. And it taught all about the perils of gluttony, being spoiled rotten, too much television and the virtues of reading books and being honest. A timeless tale with timeless lessons. You owe it to your child to put both the book and movie in his or her library. I wonder if Quaker Oats still gets royalties from the movie. “I said Good Day!”

"I'm going to give you a hard time."

Now with two kids, we have to divvy up the parenting duties a bit. Audge has been putting Bella to bed for the past few nights but suddenly she’s been giving her trouble. Toddler behavior. Having a toddler is like living with a bipolar Tasmanian devil. Everything’s fine… tick tick tick tick boom!

One night I said to Bella, “mommy’s putting you to bed tonight, and don’t give her a hard time.” “Okay” she replied. Audge got her to bed and settled and was about to read to her. Bella looked at her and said, ”I’m going to give you a hard time.” And she did. And the end of reading time I had to go in and put her to bed.

It amazed me that at three and a half our daughter was aware of her bad behavior, and knew what to call it. This is the mistake a lot of parents make. Thinking kids don’t know what they’re doing. They know exactly what they’re doing. It’s like they’ve already read “The Prince” by Machiavelli before they’re two.

So now I’m a bit more suspicious of my daughter’s behavior. What’s she up to? Is she hiding something? Does she think this will somehow lead to ice cream? It’s like a toddler episode of "24" .

So we don’t underestimate our toddler anymore. She’s too smart. In fact, it makes sense, it’s when their brain is developing and the most active. Our adult brains are dulled from mind numbingly boring jobs, cable news channels and processed foods in easy to carry wrappers. Looks like we’re going to have to step up our mental game.

Bowing to the Corporate Masters

In was a nice quiet Saturday Morning. Bella was playing on the floor with her books, the baby was asleep in the pack and play thing and Audge was food shopping. But then I got bored. I remembered when I was a kid Saturday had the best cartoons. Maybe I’ll check it out.

I asked Bella if she wanted to watch some television. She said yes. She never asks to “watch television” She’ll request something specific like Lady and the Tramp or Blade Runner, but never to just "Watch TV". We limit TV use so I like the fact that our TV isn’t on that often in our house. So I turned it on and looked at the channel guide.

Oooo a new Spiderman cartoon. Cool! Bella wanted to watch it too but asked for the theme song. I play it for her on CD, the old one from the 60’s cartoon. Sadly, no cool theme song on this one. Just dull character design and average exported overseas animation.

Bella and I started watching it. Her eyes glazed over and she was mesmerized. Suddenly gentle Doc Connors turned into the Lizard! One of my favorite Spiderman Villains because he’s a scientist who is missing an arm and injects himself with reptile DNA to regrow it. Instead he turns into a giant lizard. BUT HE STILL WEARS THE LAB COAT. Awesome. Although it was a little scary. Bella seems to like scary things, so she said it was OK and wanted to keep watching. As expected Spiderman saved the day and helped the lizard who “wanted to be a man” again.

Then the really scary part came. The commercials. The commercials showed upcoming shows from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (in the future?) Huh? Do Eastman and Laird know about this? Then a new Batman show. Bella said she wanted to see all of them. Then there was a Fruit loops commercial. She then wanted that “new cheerios cereal.”

I realized what I had done in that few minutes. I had opened the floodgates to corporate assholes who want our money. In just 30 minutes time she wanted everything she had seen, from Fruit Loops to seeing more shows, which creates an endless loop of mindless viewing and consuming. And it was so EASY. The television was saying “Just turn me on and hand them over.” It scared me a bit, I have to be honest.

So I turned the television OFF. These are my children, and frankly, soulless marketing suits, you can’t have them. Thankfully, Bella forgot about the ten other animated shows and the fruit loops in another 12 minutes. So out of sight, out of mind-- which can be a really good thing sometimes. But now I can’t get that old theme song out of my head. Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can… Where is that CD?