He’d like you to know that there is nothing funny about a broken humerus, especially when there are bikes to be ridden, swings to be swung and trees to be climbed.
FollowViolated by SpongeBob
April 12, 2010
For the past couple of months, my five-year-old has been asking to watch “Fire Burning” on the computer. It took his older sisters to explain what the heck this means, and it turns out it refers to a YouTube video they’ve seen at a friends’ house.
Someone has taken the popular(?) song by Sean Kingston(?) and crudely overlaid it to clips from SpongeBob SquarePants’ episodes in this video. I say crudely because the characters’ mouths hardly seem sync’d to the song’s lyrics, but it seems harmless enough.
I was a bit bummed that they had first seen this video at a friends’ home before I could see it, but when I learned of it, I put it on and watched it. Most of it. After watching SpongeBob, Patrick and the gang’s goofy faces for a few minutes, I got up and wandered away, keeping the music on to hear the rest of the lyrics.
MISTAKE.
This weekend, with my son square in my lap, I was stuck with my eyes on the screen for the entire four-plus minutes of the song. And at 4:03, this is what I saw, appear on the screen
It was all I could do not to blurt out, “WHAT THE F*CK!” in front of my son. Instead, I quickly closed the screen and then started quizzing the kids:
“have you seen that word before?”
“why do you think it’s there?”
“have any of your other friends mentioned it when they’ve seen the video?”
I told them why the word upset me so much. Why it had no business being there, and that the creator of the video obviously added it for shock value. Maybe he knew how many kids would stumble upon this video and watch it.
But, why put “rape” over a kids’ video? What is the purpose?
I’d like to say that after this episode, my kids will never ever watch another video before I can screen it, ALL of it. But, the reality is they go to drop-off playdates now, and, even with parental controls on our computers, I’m not standing over them all the time. And there will be times they see things that I don’t want them to see.
And the things they could see could be so, so, so much worse than a word, I know that. And maybe that is what bothers me most of all.
——————
edited to add:
As my sis, Mrs Q, noted, the video now has a flag on it. Anyone who wants to watch the video has to plug in their birthdate which will deter some kids from seeing it. I have to give props to YouTube for putting up this up so quickly.
Moms, don’t make it look too easy
April 8, 2010
Several years ago, when my oldest daughter was still a busy toddler and the other two kids were younger than that, I stood in my driveway talking to the girl next door. She was probably around 10 years old at the time and spent a lot of time in our yard making my kids laugh and run around.
Somehow, our talk turned to what she wanted to be when she grew up. The details of how we got on this subject don’t really matter. What matters is what my neighbors’ daughter said next:
When I grow up, I want to be my mom, so I can lie around the house and do nothing all day.
She skipped away before I could make a sound, although I think the first sound I made was a little squeak with my mouth hanging open.
I know she didn’t mean to disparage me—-she is an awesome, polite, wonderful person who would never have said something to hurt my feelings. In her defense, she probably thought what I did was “work” since she could see me chasing after three kids, bags under my eyes and milk stains on my shirt.
But, her own mom didn’t still have diapers to change and hands to hold. Her own mom was a stay-at-home mom to kids who went to school.
But, do nothing? I know this parent very well and even back then, I knew how much running around she did for those kids. Plus her yard was beautiful, the house clean and the dog walked: this was not a mom who lied around the house doing nothing all day.
And yet, a child’s breezy comment bugged me then, and has bugged me since.
It has changed how I talk to my kids. I don’t want them to think “work” is something that is done only outside of the house by people who dress up, have meetings and talk of commuting and deadlines.
Work is changing the sheets on four beds. It’s mopping the floors. It’s laundry and dishes, cooking and chauffeuring kids to soccer practice, then dance, then Scouts.
Work is teaching my kids. It is writing online, whether for money, samples or sanity.
It may sound funny to hear me say, “wait a minute, I need a little time to work” to my kids before I clean the bathrooms, but dammit, I don’t want them to ever say I lie around the house and do nothing all day.
