The worst part about having your kids grow up is having to watch grown-up TV with them. OK, it’s better than having to watch children’s TV with them.
Marginally.
Because children’s TV is a crime against art, life and humanity in general.
You parents in the room? Remember Caillou?
Yeah, I know. Right?
Excessive exposure to Caillou is scientifically proven to contribute to the onset of Type II Diabetes.
Like the rest of you, after the first 10 minutes, I wanted to hunt down and kill Caillou.
Caillou is everything I hate in a television series.
In case you’ve been spared the horror of this particular program, Caillou is about a little boy. He lives in a blue house. He is kind and gentle and sweet, and watching it will teach your children to be kind and gentle and sweet.
Which is to say, completely ill-equipped for the fast-paced, competitive lifestyle of the new millennium.
Who wants children who are kind and gentle and sweet?
I want fierce corporate warriors who take no crap from man nor beast, Machiavellian princes and princesses who can successfully navigate the cut-throat world that is the modern workplace by manipulating and terrorizing others.
I may not be the typical parent in this regard.
To prepare my children for the future, I used to read to them from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War as a bedtime story. My son to this day gets laughs telling friends that he grew up thinking Warren Zevon’s Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner was a lullaby.
I wanted to make them watch American Gladiator and re-runs of Ultimate Fighting Championship bouts as more lifetime prep, but my wife wouldn’t let me.
She also put a stop to the nightly readings from The Art of War. Made me substitute some crap about a stuffed bear named Pooh.
She’s funny that way. In fact, she’s the one who decided the kids should watch Caillou.
And like I said, after 10 minutes, I wanted to shoot Caillou in his little, round head.
This, despite the fact that Caillou is a cartoon character and it’s hard to kill a drawing.
But Caillou is so boring that you know he’s destined to become one of those adults whose entire conversational offerings at parties will be to describe — in excruciating detail — the route he took to get to the party, the traffic he encountered and the alternate routes he had in mind should it have snowed. Cause, you know. When it snows, you should avoid steep hills.
Don’t even get me started on that spawn of Satan, Barney the Dinosaur.
I wanted to chain Barney to an eight-foot piece of rebar and play rotisserie over an open flame.
Just for starters.
After that, I planned to get creative.
And mean.
Kids TV wasn’t always this way.
When I was growing up, the most popular children’s television show starred a cross-dressing, violent, sexually ambiguous, vegetarian troublemaker.
His name … was Bugs Bunny.
But even though the Barney the Dinosaur years are in the rearview mirror, there’s a new level of discomfort. Now, no matter what’s on TV, if they come into the room and say, “Oh boy! I love this show!” you can’t send them away just because there’s boobs on screen.
I remember watching Season One of Game of Thrones with my son. He was 15 then.
Semi-explicit sex scene comes on.
Jake: I’m totally gonna like this better than Lord of the Rings.
Jake’s Father: Not gonna lie. Me too.
Jake: Hold on! That’s his … is that his sister?”
Jake’s Father: Um, yeah. I guess so.
Jake (shrugging): Whatever. Still better than Lord of the Rings.
Jakes’ Father: Would Lord of the Rings been improved by sex?
Jake stops to think.
Jake: Naw. Watching a Hobbit and Gollum go at it would be awful … like watching your parents do it. No offence.”
Jake’s Father: None taken. I guess.
And then didn’t really get to enjoy the episode cause I was wondering what a Hobbit and Gollum going at it would look like. And then I Googled it on the internet and … well. If you want my advice.
Don’t.
Just don’t.
For the love of God … don’t.
Anyway, having to watch grown-up TV with grown-up kids isn’t the worst part of having grown-up kids. The worst part about grown-up kids is the fact that their very presence is a reminder of your rapidly advancing age and eventual death.
Face it, the minute your son has to shave every day, he might as well be wearing a black, floor-length robe with a hood that falls so far forward as to completely obscure his face while carrying a scythe around the house.
Although, I must admit, the odds of getting my son to pick up any sort of useful appliance with which work could be accomplished around the house is a long shot on par with me getting to give Scarlett Johansson a sponge bath.
Some things, I guess, never change.
Print this page
