Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver

Author:Barbara Kingsolver
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-11-04T16:40:58.404000+00:00

The subject isn’t entirely closed, of course, because we are not Amish. We are what you’d call a regular American family, surrounded by regular America, and I believe in raising children who express themselves freely. This they do. The other night they raised the question once again of whether it might not be time for us to join the twenty-first century and every other upright-walking family we know of, at least in this neighborhood, and get cable TV.

“Why are you asking me?” I said, pretending to be dismayed. “Do I look like the dictator of this house?”

My efforts to stall weren’t fooling anybody. I am not the dictator of this house, but I am the designated philosopher-king of its television-watching habits. That is to say, when my subjects become restless on the topic of TV, as they do from time to time, I sit down once again and explain to them in the kindest of tones why it is in their best interest to drop it.

But this time I’d been blindsided. Teenager and kindergartner were in league, with perhaps even the sympathies of my husband, though he was precluded from offering an opinion by his diplomatic ties. But the indentured serfs were fomenting a small rebellion.

“OK, look,” I said to my serfs. “Watching TV takes time. When are you going to do it?”

They answered this without blinking: Evening. Morning. Prime time. Only when something good is on.

Which was just what I was afraid of. I explained that while I could understand there were probably some good things on TV that they were missing, they would have to miss out on other things in order to watch them, and when I looked around at what everybody was doing in our house, I couldn’t really see what would give. I asked them, particularly my teenager (who likes to watch Daria and MTV at other people’s houses, and whom I immediately sniffed out as our Robespierre here), to spend a few days paying careful attention to the hours of her life and exactly how she spent them. Kind of like keeping a calorie record, only with minutes. If she could come up with two expendable hours per day, I’d consider letting her spend them with the one-eyed monster.

She agreed to this, and at that moment I knew I’d already won. Here is what she does with her time: goes to school, does homework, practices the upright bass, talks with friends on the phone, eats dinner with the family, does more homework, reads for fun, hangs out with friends at their houses or ours, works out, listens to music, jams on the electric bass, tries to form an all-girl band, maintains various pets, participates in family outings, and gets exactly enough sleep. (In summertime the routine is different but the subject is moot, because then we live beyond the reach of cables, in a tiny house with no room for a TV and antique electricity that likely wouldn’t support one anyway.) Her time card, in short, is full.

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