Circumstances that have caused me distress in recent days have yet to be resolved in any way that would make things better for me, but I'm trying hard not to think about unpleasant things right now. It would be easier to distract myself if I could dive or hurdle or para-sail, but those activities are frowned upon for patients recovering from kidney surgery, or for car accident victims whose broken bones have not yet healed. The only thing I really have to distract me now is television.
I've watched many truly low-brow TV programs in recent days. "Toddlers & Tiaras" is particularly riveting. Alana, the Honey Boo Boo Child, is a great source of distraction. I feel a bit guilty watching her and her unusual family, as TLC is clearly exploiting her family, but the family is the proverbial derailed train from which one can not avoid rubbernecking even though almost everyone watching knows how wrong it is to be entertained at the expense of a mother and child who don't know better than to expose their backwoods eccentricity on national television. Then again, maybe the joke's on those watching, as I understand that Honey Boo Boo Child will be featured on her own show. Alana and her mother June may be laughing their way to the nearest check-cashing business. At least with Honey Boo Boo child, I get the feeling that any really outrageous behavior on the part of either the child or the parent is as a result of lack of knowledge of a better way of conducting oneself. With other parents and children I've seen on "Toddlers & Tiaras," as stupid as some of them may be, most of them do know deep down that spending the rent money on pageants is just plain wrong; they may very well do it anyway, but they know it's wrong, just like they know it's wrong to amp their children up with mixtures heinous of caffeine and sugar, which they also do in spite of knowing better.
I asked my mom why she never entered me in a baby beauty pageant. I had to wait about five minutes for her to stop laughing before she could give me an answer. When she finally composed herself, she gave several reasons. For one thing my mother said, a successful baby beauty pageant contestant needs at least to be able to fake charm even if she doesn't actually possess it. I, according to my mother, would have walked onto the stage and stared the judges down with my signature devil child glare. (See my profile picture.) another reason my mother gave is that she refused to rot my teeth with Pixie Stix or whatever is in that odious mixture known euphemistically as Go Go juice.Furthermore, my mom said, my insistence as a child upon wearing clothing inside out because the seams irritated my sensitive skin would not have served me well as a baby beauty pageant kid. Penultimately, she said it would have cost me serious points in the competition when I corrected the pageant MC's English usage. And lastly, my mom said she was unwilling to expose either herself or me to any of the hideous epizootic pathogens that were certain to be lurking on any surface touched or even breathed upon by any of the pageant regulars. She also said she would have told me that I didn't have "the look," but she watched an episode of "Toddlers & Tiaras" recently that featured a child with dwarfism who did reasonably well in the competition. I was an undersized child, but I was conventionally proportioned. Besides, we all know that with enough fake hair and makeup, any child can have "the look."
All things considered, it's just as well not to have footage of oneself in something like a baby beauty pageant appearance stored away in a vault, potentially making its way to YouTube.
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