We'll Be Right Back

Sammy asked to watch Curious George the other day, but it wasn’t on at the time. I told him so over my shoulder, not really paying attention and figuring he’d move on to playing with his trains or settle for whatever was on at the moment. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

His face crumpled, and his mouth bent into this spectacular grimace of disappointment ad anger, all of which I’d seen before – after all, he’s 4 (4 is Fun! Just keep repeating that, mothers of 4 year olds) – but it was the look in his eyes that really snapped my head back. It wasn’t just that I had betrayed him by keeping such a simple pleasure away from him, that I was mercilessly depriving him of what was his right. No, that the typical response whenever I won’t give him a cookie after breakfast. He thought I was out and out lying to him.

It dawned on him that why shouldn’t he? He lives in a world where we can pause live TV, skip through commercials (if there are any – so many kids don’t air them interstitially any more, a loss for the toy manufacturers I have to say, not that I’m advocating anything), and call up programs On Demand, or at least pop a DVD whenever the desire hits. Surely I could just make that monkey appear with a click of the remote. Television is a no waiting proposition these days.

He’ll never know the feeling of anticipation on Friday night that when we wakes up the next morning, he’ll have an entire block of cartoons at his disposal after a long, hard week of painting pine cones and holding spelling bees. He won’t have to wait until the next day when the time slot for Sesame Street rolls around, because another episode can be queued up within seconds. And he can press pause to take a bathroom break instead of waiting until the next break.

But he has yet to tell me he just has to have something he’s seen in a commercial. Because he doesn’t have to watch them.

Just think of all the brain cells he’ll save from not learning all those jingles.

We’re working on patience. Him to understand that you can’t always get what you want (thanks, Mick) right now, and me to hold back from regaling him with stories of how I had to walk 3 miles in the snow just to watch Bert and Ernie. Without Elmo. (The horror!)