Matter of Laugh or Death

By Bill Dunn

Interesting observations on this thing we call life

CHARACTER-BUILDING EXPERIENCE: ARE WE THERE YET?

There is a disturbing new trend in family relations which must be stopped. Parents are buying minivans and SUVs fitted with little TV screens, usually mounted on the ceiling of the vehicle so the back seat passengers can watch videos.

In recent months I discovered that three different families, all friends or relatives of mine, own automobiles with these fancy devices. They absolutely rave about this new technology. “We just pop in a Disney movie,” one mother explained to me, “and the kids don’t say a peep for the entire two-hour trip.”

If you ask me, there is something very sinister about youngsters staring at “The Little Mermaid” and shoveling potato chips down their gullet during an inter-state journey to Grandma’s house.

It’s not that gazing at TV for long periods of time rots a child’s mind—of course it does. But what’s two hours of viewing in the car once in a while compared to the usual 800 hours of home viewing each and every week? (Yeah, I know there’s not even 800 total hours in a week, but I watched so much television as a child, my math skills are poor.)

And it’s not that sucking down junk food while watching Ariel battle Ursula the Sea Witch ruins a child’s physical health—of course it does. But again, the occasional bag of Doritos in the car is nothing compared to the typical American youngster’s daily intake of 6,000 calories from each of the four major food groups: fat, sugar, cheese, and chocolate.

No, it’s not that video systems in the car are bad for kids, or, I should say, not any worse than everything else children are exposed to these days. The problem with a TV and VCR in the car is that the entire family misses out on an important character-building experience: the road trip from hell.

Some of the most vivid memories of childhood—painful then, sure, but downright nostalgic now—are from those long journeys with the entire family stuffed into the Ford Fairlane or the Dodge Dart. Some of the greatest phrases in the Official American Lexicon were born on family road trips, including, “Stop touching me!” “Mom! He’s looking at me!” and the all-time classic, “Are we there yet?!” (Which was usually uttered the first of 7,000 times before the car had even backed out of the driveway.)

In the good old days, when there were no VCR players to numb little brains on long journeys, children had to use their creativity to pass the time. Some of my personal favorites were:

• Gazing at a younger brother and whispering, “I have X-ray vision, and if I stare at you long enough it will burn a hole into your head.” (This usually evoked the “Mom! He’s looking at me!” wail.)

• Pretending to poke your finger into the arm of your sister, but stopping your hand a fraction of an inch short. When she screamed, “Stop touching me!” you could honestly reply, “I am not touching you!” all-the-while continuing to jab your finger to within a whisker of her arm, nose, eye, etc.

• Carefully concealing a single Raisinette between your thumb and forefinger while reaching you hand up toward your brother’s scalp. Then you pulled your hand away, displayed the Raisinette, and yelled, “Oooh! A tick!” When the brother protested, “I do not have ticks!” you would pop the Raisinette into your mouth and say, “Hmm…extra bloody.” (If you did it with enough dramatic flair, the sister to your other side, still trying to avoid the non-touch finger poke, would suddenly need to use the motion sickness bag Mom so wisely brought along.)

• Dodging Dad’s blind backhand swing as he attempted to restore peace and quiet in the back seat while at the same time keeping the car from careening off a cliff. Since his aim was based on a quick glance into the rearview mirror, it was easy to avoid his hand. Occasionally, his desperate flail would catch the sister on the side of her head while she was using the aforementioned motion sickness bag, causing a major mess and ratcheting up the vehicle’s tension level to an all-time high. What nostalgic fun!

Today’s youngsters are missing out on all these vital family-bonding activities. No wonder the nuclear family is disintegrating at such an alarming rate these days.

Are we, the parents of America, going to sit passively while our kids are turned into pudgy zombies? Are we going to deny our children essential character-building experiences? And most importantly, are we there yet?

©2001