Go Throw Rocks

Krayton Kerns
8.23.06

I think I found the problem.  Last Sunday, like every Sunday, Druann and I went for our seven mile run and then we were back to the kitchen eating breakfast and reading over the Billings Gazette.  There were the usual stories…this guy shot that guy…this guy was drunk and crashed into that guy…this guy was in Thailand for a school teaching job and sex change, and he confessed to killing a little girl in Colorado ten years ago…you know, all the regular routine Sunday morning news.

 

Sipping my coffee as I turned the pages, a headline jumped off the paper and slapped me across the face, “For Kids Getting Shots, TV More Soothing Than Mom.”  I choked on my sausage.  I read it again.  It said the same thing.   So, I read the whole article.

 

An Italian pediatrician, Carlo Bellieni, published a study showing that when children, ages 7 to 12, were subjected to needle pricks those who were distracted by TV felt less pain than those soothed by Mom.  (Boy, it’s a good thing the experiments were conducted on kids and not rabbits or PETA would have torched this guy’s house.)

 

Dr. Bellieni theorized that there is a pain killing endorphin release produced when kids become absorbed in television.  Read that headline again.  Does this not at least partially explain the breakdown of the American family?  We don’t need mothers, we just need TV.  To keep the nurturing relationship warm and fuzzy, let’s change the name from TV to ME…Mother Equivalent.  Sorry Mom, we don’t need your services anymore.

 

Throughout the day I pondered the article, and by evening I realized how lucky I was to be raised on the gumbo flats near Ingomar.  We didn’t have TV.  Mostly, we had dirt, rocks, sagebrush, and rattlesnakes.  It was paradise to an 8 year-old with two brothers.  Idle time was spent throwing rocks; sometimes at rattlesnakes, sometimes at each other, and sometimes at nothing in particular.  We didn’t have TV, but we did have a Mom, and she was always there.  I didn’t need a TV then, and I don’t want an ME now.

 

Over time things changed and I picked up a wife, a degree, three kids, a mortgage and a TV.  Due to my cowboy heritage and frustrations with the entertainment industry, in 1987 I cut the cord off my TV set.  My kids were a little disappointed at first, but they soon learned to fill their free time with other things.  Now they throw rocks.  (I did wire the set back up during the first Gulf War, but some senseless sitcom would force me to cut it again.  After several years of wiring and rewiring, the set was becoming a bit of an electrical hazard so it was retired.)  My kids are gone now and I have another TV, but I do miss the simpler life without television.  Wouldn’t it be great to get back to the time where Mom was more soothing than TV?  Now, go throw rocks.