Now that I
own my own small transportation company, I’m discovering wonderful things that
I haven’t enjoyed in a long time, like Saturdays and Sundays off. Back in the days of driving a cab, I drove
literally seven days a week for years.
Not anymore. Happy days.
A few Saturdays ago, our 11 year-old
granddaughter spent the morning with us.
This is not out of the norm mind you, because she or her 7 year-old
brother has spent many a night with us before, but the thing is, as I mentioned
above, I’ve not been there to experience the entire visit before. This particular visit was just for Saturday
morning as her mother was working and her brother and father were attending a
Little League baseball awards picnic.
Madelyn wanted no part of that so she asked if she could seek refuge at
our house.
When she arrived at around 8:30, my
wife, who does not like to get up early on the weekends, crawled out to greet
her. I, of course had already been up
for hours. I had been playing around on
my laptop. Lana and I both ran a fresh
cup through the good ole’ Keurig and sat down in our recliners, catching up on
the latest pre-teen gossip.
The next thing I know, Madelyn comes
over and plops down on the loveseat next to my recliner and steals the remote
control from me. My left hand
immediately began to twitch from withdrawals.
Not just anyone can get away with doing that. I looked up over the top of the laptop,
somewhat excited, anticipating Saturday morning cartoons from yesteryear. Buggs Bunny, Road Runner, Bullwinkle, Mickey,
Johnny Quest. What was Madelyn going to
watch? Something similar I bet. I closed the laptop.
What comes on? A new modern cartoon with incredible
graphics? Not hardly. It’s a pre-teen sitcom. Oh boy!
I sip my coffee and watched this thing.
We have kids running around that are in a band supposedly famous, making
lots of money, deciding to go a birthday of a fan, who captures them for the
night because she likes them so much.
Yeah, pre-teen stalker with no parents around. I won’t bore you with all the details with
this one, but the point here is this; hey networks, you have an opportunity
here. You have kids watching! You could write scripts with a positive
influence on the kids watching. Also, on
this show and the next three I saw after this one, I heard repeatedly lines
containing double negatives as well as other examples of poor English.
I know we are dealing with kids of
pre-teen ages and so plots should be silly and fun. I sat there and watched two hours of shows
like Girl Meets World, Jessie, and Austin & Ally. Yes, I really did watch them. The acting by
the young people was really pretty good, but that writing! Come on.
The parents and grandparents of all
kids who watch these shows should call out for a call to arms! I propose for a recall of retired English
teachers to come forth and be assigned one per show to watch over each team of
writers. I’m not saying just any sort of
English teacher either. I want to see
the hair-up in a bun, glasses on, holding a ruler, never smiling, sentence
diagraming English teacher. You know,
THAT one. I want her to snap a ruler
over the knuckles of those writers and smack them up the side of THEIR heads
before they finish another script. A
birthday party without adults present? I
don’t think so. Double negatives? What are you thinking?
I’m worried enough about what my
grandkids are learning in school these days.
I would hope on Saturday morning they would get some sitcoms directed at
their own age groups written well enough to influence them positively. Oh, and Madelyn, quit changing channels
during the commercials just to avoid commercials. Watching another show for three minutes is
annoying. Your father does that and your
uncle (my son) with the radio as we drive to Canada to go fishing. It is another topic for another time, but
after 14 hours of that, it will make you want to climb over the seat and wrap a
shoelace around their throats.
Where do I sign up? Must I wear my hair in a bun? Yes, sentence diagramming is awesome.
ReplyDeleteI knew you would go for the diagramming. We will skip the bun in your case. The rest, however, must be strictly enforced.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're telling me that Bugs Bunny never used a double negative? He also tended to dress in drag a lot and drop anvils on character's heads.
ReplyDelete