A sign that perhaps my kids actually do hear me when they’re pretending to ignore me: the other night, Tom was watching the Ohio State game.
Ok, before I go any further, I must tell you about HOW Tom watches the game.
We recently decided that paying for satellite TV is not only not in the budget, but that it offers so many choices, most of them meaningless, of shows to watch that we would do away with it altogether. (Perhaps a temporary decision, but that remains to be seen.) Regardless of the permanency of the viewing options, football remains a sport that we all love to watch, particularly when it comes to the Buckeyes. With the exception of Preston, who adamantly remains a loyal Wolverines fan, our entire family is quite supportive of OSU football.
Ok, again before I go any further: Mom is a little more than supportive - Mom is sometimes a raging fanatic who screams at the television to the point of embarrassing the kids when there isn’t even any one not related to us in the house. “Mom, give it a rest, would you?!?” But I digress...
Anyway, after borrowing a ladder from the nice neighbors, Tom and the boys disassembled the necessary components and returned them to the service provider. We were all a little sad to see the TV screen go to static, but as soon as I had the cords properly reconnected between the DVD/VCR players and the back of the television, we at least had a wonderful shade of blue nothingness to look at when Lightning McQueen finished the final round of the race by pushing The King across the finish line to the roar of the sold-out stadium.
So now, we were left to our own devices (the church I grew up in would probably consider it a vice, as opposed to a device, but again I digress so I’ll save that post for another day) when it came time to figuring out how we would survive without cheering on our favorite team, led by gray-haired Jim Tressel who reminds me of my own red-haired Uncle Jim. Tom attempted to repair the outside antenna, but considering his disability in scaling buildings sans Spiderman-like capabilities, combined with his dislike of ladders at heights greater than his own height, he was quite limited in what he could actually accomplish from ground level.
To compensate, my ingenious husband did the following: placed the 9 inch TV on a kitchen chair near a window; connected a cable to the TV and pushed the other end of this cable through a small opening by the window frame; attached the outdoor end of the cable to indoor rabbit ears located on the porch; climbed on a step ladder perched on the wheelchair lift and hoisted the rabbit ears into the eave spout; taped the rabbit ears firmly in place; yelled for Mom to watch the screen, relay information to Bucky, Bucky to stand by the door and yell the relayed information to Dad; yelled “better?” dozens of times as he fidgeted with the rabbit ears until Mom relayed to Bucky to yell to Dad that it was good; strolled back inside with a satisfied grin on his face and promptly sat down to enjoy a stirring, if slightly fuzzy but victorious, sporting event.
But as for the idea that my kids ingest and retain information I freely spout, again I say this may be a reality. My reasoning behind this theory is this: while Tom was watching the football game last weekend, Savannah and I were sitting on the couch with him. During a commercial break, one of the advertisements that aired was a political ad for Steve Buehrer, who is campaigning to become the next U.S. Representative for the 5th Congressional District of Ohio. The statements being made were about lowering taxes, but no names had been mentioned. Savannah pipes up and says "Ron Paul!"
Maybe next week she’ll be toting signs around town with the words "Hope for America, Hope for My Generation" emblazoned in bright blue and red.
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