Monthly Archives: November 2016

What might happen if a TV reality show followed you around for a few weeks and filmed everything you did? Could your life compete for viewers with the lives of celebrities like the Kardashians?

If a reality show camera crew visited our house, here is what I imagine they might report back to the producer:

Do we have to follow her every day when she takes a walk? How come a woman with 17 grandchildren walks so fast? Easy for her to go marching along like she has a drill instructor inside her head—she doesn’t have to carry a camera. It’s a lot of work to lug this thing back and forth to get different shots. Not that there’s anything much different to film—once you’ve seen one deer or one flock of turkeys, you’ve pretty much seen them all.

And why do these people get up so early? He’s supposed to be retired, and she works at home, which as far as I can see means she sits in front of her computer and writes a few words now and then, in between playing solitaire and checking Facebook. It’s not like they have to beat rush hour traffic and get to work by 8:00 a.m. But there they are, all bright-eyed at 5:30 in the flipping morning. Today, I kid you not, they were lying in bed at 6:00 a.m. talking about what Shakespeare sounds like in the original Klingon! I mean, you can’t make this stuff up.

And the way they spend their evenings. Boooring. Mostly, he sits in his chair with his book and she sits on the couch with hers. Once in a while he reads bits out loud about people nobody’s ever heard of, like some old general named Marshall, I think it was. So that gives us five minutes of sound, at least. Otherwise, whoop-di-do. We’ve had to resort to close-ups of how fast her eyeballs move back and forth across the pages—I’ve never seen anybody read that fast. Sometimes they play some domino game called Mexican Train. But nobody cheats, nobody argues, nobody throws dominos when they lose. Where’s the conflict? Where’s the drama? Where’s the viewer interest?

When a couple of the grandkids came over, we thought we might have a chance for some conflict and maybe a temper tantrum or two. Not so much. Where’s the drama when she never tells them no? And let’s face it—little kids are cute, but you can only use so many shots of the expression on a one-year-old’s face when he eats a dill pickle. Besides pickles right out of the jar, she fed them peanut butter by the spoonful, so that at least gave us a little bit of “yuck factor” footage. But aren’t grandmas supposed to bake cookies? And if I have to listen to Hop on Pop one more time, I swear I’m going to throw this camera through the nearest window.

Last week they took a road trip. Hallelujah, we thought—finally, something to see. Fat chance. You know what passes for scenery across the whole western half of South Dakota? (We’re in South Dakota, right, not North Dakota?) Anyway, the “scenery” is prairie. All the way to the horizon. With pretty much nothing on it but cows. There’s a tree every mile or so, and you have to drive for miles and miles before you see what they call a “town.” What if you had car trouble out there? Who would you call? Ghost Town Busters?

But today was the last straw. She was actually cooking for a change, but at the same time she was dancing in the kitchen to Johnny Cash, twirling around and waving a sharp knife in time to the music. I think she was doing a polka. The Kardashians never did anything that embarrassing.

This is way too much reality to ever attract any viewers. Let’s go with Plan B. Have you heard back yet from that woman who trains boa constrictors as service animals?