The Power of the Media Revisited
I have new information confirming our former hypothesis concerning the recent technological advances in child training and behavior control.
For approximately $500.00 you can have perfectly obedient children, at home or in public. If you are budget minded there are ways to get by for under $25.00, or if you don’t mind a little deception played on your children, there are ways to get your equipment free.
Of course if you read our first article on the power of the media you know that the electronic child control equipment we are talking about is a video camera. You can get an old twelve-pounder from the hock shop for $25.00, or you can get one free from an old friend that dropped his in the fountain and shorted out all the wiring. It doesn’t matter if you are actually taking pictures, as long as the children think you are. We have discovered that a pointed camera is better than a pointed finger. Switching on a camera (or pretending to) is better than switching on the kids.
Just this past week, I purchased a new digital video camera. It is our intention, unless prevented by the rapture or Y2K, to produce a child training video. Don’t write and ask for it now, it may take us six months. I took the camera to the church meeting Sunday to get some good footage [for you laymen, that’s videographer’s language]. I was hoping to “do a take” on some kid throwing a fit. In the course of events, I explained to everyone that I would be documenting their child training, and in the process, making some of the parents infamous. After the meeting I hurried outside to try for a Pulitzer Prize winning shot.
I saw several parents seriously talking to their children while pointing to my camera. The children were all soaking it up quite seriously. Well, with fifty kids in sight I was able to capture only one little fit. And it was spoiled when an eight-year-old candidate for an overdose on Ritalin leaped in front of the screaming child, shoved his scrawny face into the wide angle lens, and commenced to scream hysterically. He was auditioning of course. You will remember him as the one that I tied up on the camping trip. The small child immediately stopped crying and stared at the older kid. She was just out-classed. He spoiled the shot of the kid throwing a fit, but he gave me great footage of a kid the state of Texas has insisted should be put on Ritalin. His mother has wisely refused and the kid continues to act like a boy. By the way, I wouldn’t have the little knot head any other way. I wandered around the churchyard, trying to get natural shots, but everyone was on guard. It looked like an IRS waiting room.
That evening, Carolyn, 3 years and five months old, was visiting the house. I offered her a piece of cake, and she readily accepted.
