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Jeff's Life
Archive
Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at:
JEFF'S LIFE
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Monthly Column... |
by
Jeff Stimpson
"Elmo is only one example of a rising concern that corporate underwriting in public TV has gone too far." -- The Wall Street Journal
I am raising two little Americans. They saw logos before they were born: "GE" on the screens of the fetal monitors, "3M" on the sterile surgical wrap, "Sony" on the operating room boom box. I looked around at the masks and the blood and wondered if these corporations had washed their hands.
Alex knows logos. "Don't take him by there!" Jill warned one day as we were all walking down East 42nd Street. She was pointing to a red and yellow McDonalds banner, flapping over the sidewalk like a flag over enemy headquarters. "If Alex sees that he'll want to go in, and I don't want him eating that stuff again today!"
For months, we've been taking Alex to McDonalds. There his eating disorders have melted before the world-famous fries. It became a regular stop after chilly afternoons on the playgrounds; once he ate a whole Filet O'Fish. After swimming class one Saturday afternoon, I broke his cheese barrier with McD's mozzarella sticks. This summer McD's and Mister Softee finally helped get some ice cream into him. It's the only restaurant where we're guaranteed to please him.
A "logo" to a kid used to be Snoopy or the Cat In the Hat: They made money for somebody, and were commercialized, but the kid didn't care. I grew up when TV programs ran commercials only 15 minutes apart, during rigidly scheduled bathroom breaks, and they didn't besmirch the corner of the screen with their logo during the whole program like our PBS station does during "Sesame Street." If Elmo's a corporate figure, he's more palatable than most -- though I did notice, when Alex first started watching him, that Elmo's computer did in fact say AOL's "You've got mail!" just like the WSJ reported. Alex loves him. "Elmo" was one of Alex's first words, before "mommy," "daddy," or "water."
Corporations seem to hit children harder today, and special needs families encounter corporations and logos more than most. Enfamil makes it clear that they provide the most nutritious glop to drip into your kid with a feeding pump. The Nelcor name blazed across the front of every pulse-ox we owned, including the piece of crap that consistently told us Alex was satting in the low 30s for hours at a time the first week he was home. Integra, I think, trumpeted its name on the oxygen concentrator that blew our apartment's circuits for much of July, 1999.
My friend Jon thinks corporations are pernicious, without exception. I merely wonder when the low-end retail corporation became the paragon of human organization, how Wal-Mart somehow got New York City subway conductors to call passengers "customers." I also don't believe corporations have wormed into my family's medical life just for the warm fuzzy of it. Research by drug companies categorically supports use of drugs and equipment made by that company. Nelcor conveniently makes the probes for its own pulse-oximeter, contraptions of sticky gauze that last about two nights on the average active baby. Enfamil happens to make a growth chart to help doctors tell when a kid needs more Enfamil.
Believe medical corporations long and willingly enough, and you might be right back in that little room reading "GE" and "3M."
Still, it's going to be especially hard to dynamite Alex off his love of corporations. The other day, for instance, I bought him a can of Pringles. He spied them in the store and they were at eye height, and that was that. They do him no good, and sometimes it takes several meals to get him back to real food after one of us (me) breaks down and buys him a can.
A few days later, he darted into the kitchen before dinner, saw the red canister in the pantry, and said, "Pingles! Pleeeze!" He had never said "please" unasked before.
"He said 'please.' He said a brand name..." said Jill, handing him a few.
I tell myself that my kids just want what they want, that they don't understand there's a corporation involved. Ned doesn't care who makes the ball. Alex doesn't care what division of Alcoa forged the steel of the playground ladder. They're just things for fun along a path of milestones. Like the one passed just last night, in the bath, when Ned said one of his first words. He said, "Elmo."
Copyright 2001 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
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