Sandbox Confessional

Seven or so years ago, when my first child was a baby, I used to frequent a playground in my Somerville, Massachusetts neighborhood. The parents in this neighborhood included working class natives, but the renters (of which I was one) tended to be artsy types and quasi-intellectuals who did not have enough money to rent in near-by Cambridge. To some, this made us cooler still, true artsy types and quasi-intellectuals, not these candy-ass trust fund folks down the road. In any case, this demographic phenomenon made for an interesting mix of conversations around the sandbox.

One day, three moms I saw their regularly became engaged in a conversation about television viewing.

"We never watch any more," said one thirty-ish white woman, committed to staying home for the first three years of her daughter's life. "The news, some PBS and that's all. But, ofcourse, never with the Annie around."

"Oh, we don't even watch that much," said a woman who had recently moved to the US from Germany. "This compulsion with CNN is very American. No, my children will not have any television."

"We put our TV in the basement when Peter was born." This, ofcourse, was from the bossy mom who had said she had no plans to return to work because children always need their mothers, not just babies.

As the adult who had not weighed in, the three women turned to look at me. Being the only mom present who worked, I was already an outlaw. And yet, I still thought about giving a "no comment" shrug, maybe even altering my answer slightly. But instead, I went for broke.
"I love TV," I reported. "I would watch more if I could."

Their collective slack-jawed response gave me a feeling of power: I was the bad-ass mom, the dangerous one who let her baby stare into that horrible brain sucker. I was not afraid to admit that I turned to Teletubbies on purpose every day and my poor child even liked it.

Years later, when that same baby was about to go to kindergarten, an adult friend came to me with an interesting request. It seemed that after a recent conversation in which my child pointed out that billiards and pool where actually two different words for the same game, my friend felt the need to not only comment on how smart my little boy seemed to be -- but to register his concern that the child had never watched Sponge Bob. When I confessed that I had never seen Sponge Bob and asked why my soon-to-be-kindergartener should, my friend pointed out, "He needs something to talk to other kids about, and billiards ain't gonna do it."

Bravo. Sponge Bob it is.