Raising Precious

Okay, I know that I said here that American Idol is indicative of everything that is wrong with our world, but I think that I was too quick to pin the blame on one source. After receiving it in the mail yesterday, and then flipping through it in the bathroom this morning while taking a shit, it became quite apparent that the same can be said for the Pottery Barn Kids catalog.

Page four is all about "The Creative Backyard" or something like that. As if my kid can't learn creativity without a teak sandbox, lime and seafoam-striped sun umbrella, and monogrammed sand pail. (Metal, of course, because plastic is just tacky.) Creativity comes from within, Pottery Barn - Just see the idea my kid came up with while helping me garden. And, no we didn't have a monogrammed trowel and sunhat for him.

There is a section just on shit you can buy for a kid's party: Themes include pirates, surfers, and luaus. Who the fuck would buy a real teak kids' outdoor dining set, with little precious' name monogrammed onto a surfboard for a birthday party? To look at the catalog, you would think that not only are you supposed to have the director's chair that your kid will sit in while eating his cake monogrammed, but you are supposed to have the names of all the other little kids monogrammed on their items (chairs, towels, plates) presumably to take home as party favors?

So, not only are we training our kids up to think they might be the next American Idol, or the next movie or sports star, rather than teaching them tools to succeed in the real world, but now some parents are creating this fucking dreamworld that is so magnificent that nothing in the real world will ever hold a candle to it, and they will continue to be disappointed by life.

Not to mention that if I pay those kinds of prices for a fucking surfboard, I'm damn well gonna monogram my name on it.