But, Where's the T.V.?

The following is partly a play, partly prose, and entirely amateur.

Setting:  A beautiful, wooded waterfront campsite on Lake Groton in northern central Vermont.  Bright sun, light breeze.  A family is setting up camp.   

Characters:  Daddy (me), Mommy (my dear wife), and two girls (my darling daughters, aged three and 11 months).

Daddy:  Okay, here we are - camping, family, good times, no cell phone service, no emails...

Mommy:  Just look at the mountains, smell the fresh air, hear the stillness.

Daughter, aged eleven months:  Goo goo, gah gah, ducky  (smiling adorably, drooling, pointing at a duck).  

Daughter, aged three:  But, where’s the t.v.? (frantically looking around over both shoulders)

At least, that’s how I imagined the conversation would go when we arrived in Vermont for our two week camping adventure.  Surprisingly, however, although some iteration of the first three quotes occurred, the fourth never materialized.  Don’t get me wrong - we read, exercise, and play regularly.  But, you see, my oldest daughter has a dependence and it’s called t.v.  Here she was, Nick Jr. expert and Mary Poppins (the movie) fanatic, not even asking about television for 16 days.  Becoming alarmed, I began to look for symptoms of Yo Gabba Gabba withdrawal.  Would she insist that I search the gear tote for the remote control? Would she systemically revert to that glazed-over look and selective hearing that manifest themselves when the t.v. is on?  Would she become delusional and think the campfire was an episode of the Backyardigans?

No, instead, for 16 days we played in the lake, walked among the maple and birch trees, and took stroller rides along nature trails.  Activities and games included kayak rides, a nature themed scavenger hunt, and eating vegetables straight from a friend’s garden.  At night, we listened to the zany call of the loon, we counted the numberless stars, and followed the moon from full, to sliver, to new. (Now, for complete disclosure, because it was not Walden Pond, and because our last name is not Thoreau, we did periodically seek civilization during day trips.  However, for the most part, we ate our meals outdoors and lived out of a tent).  

In one of my bags I had packed Richard Louv’s The Last Child in the Woods, Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.  The book details the modern disconnect of today’s wired (and wireless?) children with the natural outdoors, along with the subsequent negative consequences to childhood development.  However, I never even had a chance to open the cover.  I didn’t need to.  We were actually writing another chapter for the book, this one called If the T.V. Is Back in New Jersey, Does Anyone Actually Hear It?

So, eventually it was time to head back home, back to our roots - family, friends, and jobs that provide paychecks that make trips like that possible. And still, not a peep about t.v. from my oldest daughter.  We returned home on the sixteenth night, I unloaded the car, we put the kids to bed... and what did I do? I proceeded to quietly turn on the t.v., of course.  

Later that night:

Mommy:  Zzzzzz

Daughter, aged eleven months:  Zzzzzz.  

Daughter, aged three:  Zzzzzz

Daddy:  (speaking to the t.v.)  I missed you Alex Trebek, I missed you Gary Cohen, Ron Darling, and Keith Hernandez..  and you, Homer Simpson, I missed you most of all...