If I had a Mastercard, I’d print this ad out frame by frame and sent it along with my shredded card.
Can we learn from our children? Or course! They are honest, brave, unsullied souls who can see so much keener than us because their hearts are not clouded by the false wisdom of experience. Right?
Right: boooshwa. Listening to the wisdom of the wee isn’t an entirely new idea, but I suspect you’d find scant evidence before the sixties. In old TV shows and movies the kids might have an idea, or a theory, and the grown-ups would be too busy pursuing a red herring to pay attention. At the end the cop would push his hat back and scratch his forehead, the universal gesture among old cops when confronted with a youngster who figured things out. But usually kids were seen, heard, loved - and instructed.
If they’d intimated that Mastercard can be used to placate your humorless little eco-scold, no one would have minded much. But no: the child is making his father a better man. It’s nice to see that Dad exists in a state of such unearthly perfection that the only means of betterment consist of abjuring incandescent lighting for pig-tailed CFLs, right? Alas: dad is a scoff-law who lets the tap run, uses doubleplus ungood bulbs, and doesn’t correct the clerk when the food is put in a cornstarch bag, perhaps because he’s thinking about his job, the cutbacks and layoffs, the tiresome daily scrum of adult life. He works hard, but of course he could work harder - he has a part-time job so he can stay at home with his son. Mom’s full-time. He downshifted so someone would always be there when Ethan came home from school. This makes him an okay man, I guess.
Isn’t it interesting how Dad looks like the sort of delayed-adolescent types most likely to be already concerned about these things, and spending his day working on developing websites for sustainability, hosted on servers powered by methane captured from pig excreta? For that matter, who would like this ad? Wives who regard their husbands as overgrown boys in need of the Moral Guidance of those who will inherit the earth, perhaps.
One more thing: if the kid didn’t learn these steps to righteousness at home, where did he get them?
What is it with potato chip bags? When you buy them they seem all robust and plentiful. Then you pop open the bag and all the air used to make the illusion of fullness rushes out as fast as your enthusiasm. It's not everyday you spend $4 on a bag of air with a few chips in it. Almost, though. Oh, they say it is for packaging and the chips don't get broken that way. Uh huh.
I was on the plane the other day and the flight attendant came over the speaker 3 times to tell everyone to turn off their cell phones. All because the person sitting caddy-corner to me was furiously texting to make sure all the critical correspondence was completed before the two hour flight. She finally came over and made the guy stop. He begrudgingly turned off the phone. Not much of a story really except for the fact the guy was 85 years old if he was a day. Do you think he thought of this scenario sitting around the radio listening to Amos and Andy?
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