Contributing To The Geekiness Of Minors

One of my very favorite times of day has always been that magical pause in the evenings when the kids and I snuggle up on the sofa for storytime. This has been a treasured part of my life since Elizabeth was a baby and we used to curl up every night in the big cozy rocking chair together and read Babybug magazine or one of her chunky board books.

Alas, time marches on. My kids are eight and ten now, and no longer content to let me read a story to them chapter by chapter. We’ll start a new book — say, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — and I’ll read Chapter 1, and they like it…so by the time the next night rolls around they’re both halfway through the book and fidgeting restlessly because they’re way past the part I’m reading to them.

As much as I love storytime, even I finally had to admit that maybe they’ve just outgrown it.

But how to get my nightly fix of snuggle time without sharing a book? I pondered this dilemma and realized that I didn’t necessarily have to give up storytime. Stories come in many different forms, after all. On dvd’s, for instance. I’d shared most of my favorite childhood books with them, maybe now it was time to start sharing my favorite old tv series, one episode per night.

So then it was just a matter of deciding which show to start with. I can’t wait to introduce Elizabeth to the Gilmore Girls, but she’s a bit too young to really appreciate it yet. Same with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Veronica Mars. Luke will LOVE The Wild Wild West (the original series, not the lame movie)…in about five years. So where to begin right now?

You know where this is going. That holy grail of geekdom: Star Trek.

I actually gave some serious thought to whether I even wanted to introduce them to this show at all, ever. I mean, in this day and age it’s tantamount to making your kid take accordion lessons, right? Just give him a bad haircut and a pocket protector and be done with it already.

In the end, I couldn’t help myself. Resistance is futile. The next generation must be assimilated into the collective. I added The Original Series to my Netflix queue and when the first disk arrived we popped it in.

Observations:

1. It had been more than 20 years since I’d seen a full episode of ST:TOS.

2. This was the cheesiest. show. ever.

3. Both kids are mesmerized by its colorful, hypnotic cheesiness.

4. It helped that they were already familiar with the basic concept thanks to our fabulous deck of Blogography playing cards.

5. The kids’ preliminary consensus is that Captain Kirk is “tricksy.” And they’re fascinated by the fact that the turbolift can move in any direction.

6. Shatner’s line delivery is hardly mockable at all in these first few episodes. I guess it wasn’t until the show gained an audience and success went straight to his head that he started milking every syllable for all it was worth.

7. I’m glad I decided to do this. I mean, sure, I’m dooming Luke and Elizabeth to a desolate existence on the geeky fringes of social acceptability, and torpedoing any chance that the cool kids will ever talk to them, but hey, that 45 minutes of basking in the warm glow of nostalgia every night makes it all totally worth it. You know, to me. They can thank me later.

Happy Love Thursday, everyone. Live long and prosper, and don’t forget: infinite diversity in infinite combinations!

Because popularity is totally overrated, right?