Commercial Daze
There's a commercial on TV right now that is begging for it, in my opinion. It features a boy pretending to be sick so he can stay home from school. His mom plays along for a bit, she's dressed casually - as if she's a stay-at-home mom - then reminds him that he had a flu shot already so he can't possibly have the flu (the flu being the only illness possibility in their lives, I guess...). Then she pulls back the covers and there he is - fully clothed and wearing a baseball glove.
I mean, it's all so wrong on so many levels, but - A BASEBALL GLOVE?!
Now, I know kids - I have three - and I have one (a boy) who might have tried to stay home from school to play video games or watch tv, but he'd hardly want to be wearing a baseball glove to do either. So other than playing into that bullshit nostalgia theme that has been going on my entire life - about the good old days - I can't imagine what the point of that kid wearing a baseball glove under the covers could possibly have been. I mean, who's he even going to play baseball with? His stay-at-home Mom? But then she'll know he wasn't really sick - that he was faking.
Oh - and why are kids having flu shots, anyway? Or are we even supposed to be asking that question?
Anyway, the commercial is such an egregious slap-in-the-face to reality that it actually made me angry. And even the Swiffer ad with the stay-at-home mother cleaning her house like a lunatic while her two friends sit sipping tea in pearls and sweater sets didn't have that affect on me. I mean, at least cleaning one's house and using a new product to do it makes a bit of sense. The friends sipping tea in pearls and sweater sets are a bit much, but what are you going to do? The working stiffs who come up with this shit must believe their own b.s. as much as our politicians do - or something.
Because that's what I'm getting at here - the complete disconnect between how life was in the "olden days" and how it's been represented on television and how we remember our own growing up years as a result of how they've been represented on television. Because I don't want to get old and start telling my grandchildren big fat lies about how my son tried to stay home from school - even after he had his flu shot to eliminate all possibility of illness as we used to do in those days - so he could play catch with all the other little boys in the neighbourhood who played outside all day every day when they weren't in their rooms buidling model airplanes and gazing at the stars with homemade telescopes.
That's because - even my own brother didn't do any of that stuff. He watched TV every second he could and hung out at the pool hall until the mall was built. But he's a judge now - so it all worked out.
Gawddamned boomers.
So yeah, I'm d'une certaine age, give or take, BUT - and it's a BIG BUTT (if you believe in TV commercials and Leave It To Beaver, which is really talking about a time that never was, but about a time that never was a couple of decades before my growing up time) I grew up with a working mother. My father died when we were young and my mother had to go back to work. The twins next door, both of whom turned out to be gay (I knew they were gay when I was five years old, but there you go - I was always ahead of my time), had a stay-at-home mother who laid out in the sun on their back patio from March until October working on her tan while her husband worked his friggin' ass off keeping her in Baby Oil, peroxide, and blue eye shadow. By the time I was in my teens, she was close to 200 pounds - although still looking great. Relaxed, fun, irreverent. I'll tell you what she told me before she got Alzheimer's and started a spectacular decline that saddened me more than I ever would have guessed it would when I was a kid and she was yelling at me to take off that Goddamned dandelion necklace because it was covered in weed killer, you idiot - "I've had a great life. Your Mom had to go back to work, poor thing. Work's a terrible thing. It really aged Percy. He couldn't even take me down to Florida last winter - too pooped to make the drive."
I haven't seen her represented in any commericals, I don't think. But it'd be funny to see that, don't you think? Talk about politically incorrect. The lazy, useless bitch of a stay-at-home mother advertising fake tanning products while her twin boys play dress up in crinolines and bake muffins in their Easy Bake Oven in the background.
But more to the point of the commercial I keep seeing, I never, ever, saw a Dad out playing ball with his son. Not once. Never. Ever. No word of a lie. At no time in my youth, did I see a Father/Son game of catch being played in my neighbourhood. We lived across the street from an open field, too. All the Dads I knew were either sleeping (I'm from the Sault and almost all of my friends' Dads worked shifts at Algoma Steel) or they were doing their shift. If they weren't sleeping or at work, they were watching TV - which meant you didn't really want to hang out with them because they'd either send you to the store for cigarettes, "Hey! Hey! Where're you going? Get in here! I'm out of smokes!", or yell at you to go outside because they were watching TV, "Hey! Get outta here! I'm watching TV!"
Meanwhile, ALL the Dads I know now spend lots of time playing video games with their sons. Or, at least, playing video games while their sons jump up and down beside them crying, "Can I play now? Can I play now?" And, personally, I'm not sure what's wrong with that. The kid learns that the biggest person in the room gets to play until he's bored - at which time it's your turn. Unless, of course, the Mom - Queen of No Fun - says it's bedtime first. In which case, you can always try to wake up extra early so you can have a turn at the controls.
Because nobody cares if you get up early - these days. In my day, my Mom would say, "Go back to bed! Can't you see I'm trying to have a coffee by myself!"
Unless I just saw that in a commercial and am remembering my life the way it never was... Hey - you guys all wore hot pants to grade school and super mini dresses with lacy underpants so when you raised your arm at the blackboard the boys would be all turned on - riiiiiiight? And the teacher would be overcome with passion and say you were way sexier'n his fiancee and the wedding was off and... no wait... that was just my 10-year-old girl FANTASY of what would happen.
But it was a real fantasy, at least. Because in spite of what Macleans, now run by the likes of Ken Whyte, would have you believe - little girls in his day and mine were sexual beings - off and on - who did stuff like that when we weren't laying around watching TV. OR - and I'm sure my lady readers remember this - laying around in the back yard trying to get a tan all summer while we waited for the mall to be built so we could waste all our time hanging around indoors.
And I'm not sure, my memory's not THAT good, but although I recall making fun of 50s-style commercials featuring housewives and cleaning products - even back in the 70s - I don't believe I ever saw one so egregiously false as a kid faking sick so he could stay home and play catch.
Unless it was the other kind of "catch". I dunno. Maybe flu shots make advertisers soft in the head before their time because it's like everything not even old is new again nowadays.
