The End, Rewind. Play. I’m the map….The End. Rewind. Play. I’m the map…The End. Rewind. Play. I’m the map…

 

My cousins have been watching Dora the Explorer for the entire morning. Every time the tape runs out, I rewind it, stick it back in, and for another forty minutes they sit in rapt attention. We are slaves to the screen. We are human robots plugged into a great media matrix. This is the future and it’s made of zombies.

 

I watch Dora move across the screen. I watch Dora take off her backpack. I watch her map jump out of her bag, and at this point I am singing along with the most original song in the history of children’s television.

”I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map.”

And I’ve had enough. I am NOT the map. I am NOT the map. I am the babysitter. I am the gatekeeper of this moral world and I will not allow my cousins to spend their lives in front of a television screen singing along to that stupid song.

 

 

When Dora runs out this time, I eject the tape. No more Dora for you, little girls. It’s time we play with real toys. Talk to each other. You know, be kids like kids were in our ancestors days. Be humans. Be anything but vegetables on a couch. Be alive. I’ve had enough and I’m taking charge.

I take Mia, 2, and Angelina, 3, and we go to the kitchen to have lunch. I cut the pizza all nice and pass it to their tiny little hands. This is good. This is humans having lunch. We’re good little people. We’re happy without that damn television.

 

I am so remotely related to these two that if we were chimpanzees in the wild—the closest living species to humans—I would not recognize them as kin in any way.

I would look at these two little girls like they were alien parasites, having landed from Mars to suck me dry of food, air, and energy.

 

But humans do recognize these distant relations, and it’s a good thing. Because of the huge human brain, babies spend a long time after birth being completely useless. Essentially, they’re still fetuses, even as newborns. For a mother, the task of constantly keeping on top of her children is daunting.

 

Mothers need help.

 

And by all inference, children need help.

Children who are raised by both their mothers and their grandmother (instead of just their mother) have a higher chance of surviving infancy and being healthy children. The more help in raising the child, the smarter the child will be.

 

Having people help with parenting, even if they live at home with you, like a mother-in-law, improves the intimacy of couples. The more people help couples with children, the more time they have by themselves, the less stressed they are, the less tired they are, and therefore the more sex they have.

 

So, I’m not just a baby-sitter, I’m a marriage counselor.

 

That’s a good thing, because not even five minutes after I’ve turned off the Dora,  my attention from Mia wanes, and my experiment comes crashing to the ground—literally. I’m handing Angelina some pizza. She’s eating it peacefully.

 

Then she’s laughing. She’s three. What would a three year-old find funny?

Oh, how about her little sister taking a Tupperware full of Cheetohs, throwing them in the air in the middle of the living room, and stomping them into the carpet.

She thinks that’s hilarious.

 

Tiny orange crumbs, mushed right into carpet fibers. Everywhere. Orange. Orange crumbs. Orange. Everywhere.

I think that I have a lot of vacuuming to do.

I'm the vacuum, I'm the vacuum, I'm the vacuum.  

 

I march back in the other room, stick Dora back in the VCR, sit the girls back in front to be hypnotized by the map, and go right to cleaning up. It takes me less than five minutes to regret turning it off in the first place. These happy, placid kids are nice. These well-behaved robots are wonderful. These zombies are so cute.

 

They can sit there all day and not drop a crumb. For that peace of mind, I don’t mind being the map. I’ll see along. I’ll be the map. See.

 

I’m the map, I’m the map, I’m the map.

 

The End, Rewind. Play. I’m the map….The End. Rewind. Play. I’m the map…The End. Rewind. Play. I’m the map…