After being processed through day care, pre-school, school, and college, some people don’t know how to live when they suddenly find themselves on their own. They acquire families and don’t have the foggiest idea what to do with them. “Family” refers to those people who are not at day care, pre-school, school, and college–in other words, persons with whom you probably haven’t spent a lot of time with in your life. What in the world are you supposed to do with them?
Not to worry–store brand Toasted Rice to the rescue! Find instructions for life on the back of the cereal box. After all, you’ve spent your whole life up till now in some kind of institution where they make all the decisions for you. No wonder you need help!
Let me quote the Introduction verbatim.
“Family UNPLUGGEd [sic] Imagine all the things you could do instead of watching television! Unplug the tube and grab your family!”
Uh, wait a minute. Is this logical? You “unplug the tube” so that your family will be “unplugged”?
Here follows a long “You Could…” list, a menu of family activities. Would you like to guess what’s the No. 1 item on the list? Go on, try–you’ll never get it. [Play Jeopardy theme music.] What’s the number one thing you can do for fun with your family? Ready? Here it is!
“Volunteer your time at a soup kitchen.”
Y’know, even under our country’s current crop of leaders, things have not reached the point where you have half a dozen soup kitchens in every little town. A lot of towns don’t even have one. This may change, once our leaders finish turning every American municipality into Tijuana North; but for the time being, a lot of us don’t have to elbow our way through a phalanx of beggars every time we step out the front door. We haven’t been under the Democrat Party long enough for that.
Besides which, I’m pretty sure they don’t set up soup kitchens as a kind of cheap theme park for bored families. And I don’t think people who need to go there will be all that receptive to the idea of you and your family dropping in on a lark. (“ladees and gentlemen! Now, live, for your edification and amusement–poor people!”) Isn’t that just a wee bit patronizing?
This is what happens when human beings are raised like insects, in and out of one institutionalized setting after another.
Why not have family time by doing things like a walk or play board games.
In fairness, their list did include a lot of sensible suggestions like that. I just couldn’t see why they made hanging out at the soup kitchen No. 1.
Wow, I’ve never heard of such a thing as this before. I always thought having and raising a family was just an automatic activity including preparing meals, doing laundry, etc. then spending time with games, movies and teaching the kids things they needed to know.
Soup kitchen viewing? Never, ever occurred to me.