Reality Television

Now that Jon and Kate plus 8 have seperate lives, there is a void in the reality television world that exploits large and unusual families for other people's voyeuristic viewing pleasure. It has been mentioned in passing on more than one occasion that yours truely and her nine should throw their hats into the ring.

As my son said, "I could live with thousands of people thinking less of me for millions of dollars." We had a good laugh but the cost of living so large is expensive in my opinion.

With writing, I get to control the extent to which I reveal. I can embellish, shade and make up as the story goes. I do all the writing I do to make points, to reveal truth through myth. Most of the time, inspiration comes from diving into the imagination from the board of reality where these stories always start.

I mean, I could write stuff like today I ate a fiber one bar for breakfast and proceeded to lose it when I found the upstairs sinks had been finger painted with tooth paste. Then we set the old grill on fire because it was infested with hornets. After two hours of flames, the darn things came back and started rebuilding. It would be entertaining but I'm not going to tell you how much of that actually happened. I'll just let the image of a flaming black oil drum grill with me posed with the hose ready to fire on the fire sit.

But with film, there'd be no hiding the fact that I spent much of the morning armed with my shop vac, cleaning the outside deck of cobwebs and spidery cocoons, or later that I fought valiantly against an invasion of fruit flies. We do not like to look at ourselves in the mirror too long, or at least, I don't. And as such, I don't know that I could bear looking too deeply at the craziness that my life can sometimes translate into when viewed from a distance. Who wants to watch a person fold six loads of laundry and then be brought to her knees by the discovery of six additional loads that have been hidden behind various children's doors, under their beds, or in the guest closet? If it's me, then I vote "Not me."

So no son, we will labor in our undiscovered glory and relish the high price we're willing to pay for having to make friends and become known through our words and deeds both done and not done, said and not said, but not on tv. It won't make millions, but it won't be forever on reruns either. Unless I write about it and post it on the internet.

Oops.