When my pre-teen daughter’s peers get together, the first thing they ask each other is: “Who do want to win American Idol?” The next thing they must know is: “Who’s your favorite Jonas Brother?”
On the basis of this data, they forge their self-identities and begin to socially sort themselves, much as an earlier generations of girls sorted themselves on the basis of their favorite Beatle or New Kid or any of the numerous other non-threatening post-pubescent all-male but still-sorta-feminine singing groups who perform this valuable identity-building and social-sorting role for our pre-teen females.
Until recently, my daughter couldn’t answer these questions, as we don’t watch American Idol and, though we’ve heard the Jonas Brothers on the radio, we’ve never actually seen them. And seeing is the whole point of the Jonas Brothers experience, or so I’m told, so she really can’t pick a favorite.
In short, we’re raising a freak child.
I’m okay with that, being a freak adult myself, but my wife, perhaps moved by some vestigial memory of her favorite Bay City Roller, is not okay with that.
So that’s why last Tuesday night found me and my daughter planted in front of the TV watching American Idol, perhaps the last Americans to be initiated into its mysteries. My daughter’s job: Find a favorite contestant. My job: Avoid snarky comments. Notepad in hand, she dutifully recorded the name of each contestant and distinguishing physical characteristics, while I did my best impression of a couch potato, switching off my brain and slumping back in slack-jawed silence.
That didn’t last long. The sights and sounds of this, our most popular television show, simply overwhelmed the cultural criticism compartment of my brain, pressing each of its hot buttons, which, against my will and contrary to my explicit instructions, caused it to whir into action. It was all I could do to keep my recently slack-jawed mouth shut.
As my bottled-up brain gathered steam and threatened to blow, my daughter earnestly jotted away, oblivious to my turmoil.
And that’s how it should be, for she’s still just a child, with a child’s view of the world, and I don’t want to distort it with my adult opinions. As her parent, it is my duty to guide her development, not supplant it. So, let her reach her own conclusions, I kept repeating to myself, as the ravings in my head grew ever more feverish.
I cracked only once, wondering out loud how Bob Dylan would have done as a contestant on this show, but I left it at that.
And she ended up selecting two favorites, a male and a female, and gathered enough observations about the other contestants to carry her through the social whirl until the next week’s show.
