Screen Free Week

Screen Free Week:

First Day, Monday:  7:00 – wake up. 7:15 - Son collapses at breakfast table saying he can’t take any more. Dog gets a long walk and daughter makes up new trampoline game involving her ballet costume. Strange not to be able to Google things I don’t know.

Tuesday: We went to Rock Road library after school. What a magic place. The kids now sitting around before dinner reading. After dinner, we listened to music and danced around. Kids into Fleetwood Mac. 

Wednesday: I break out the Yahtzee game and teach it to the children. The sound of the dice rolling makes the kitchen a little Las Vegas-y. This is like pre-poker. After baths we read By The Shores of Silver Lake, one of the Little House on the Prairie series. Mary and Laura had lives of hardship and no screens. 

Thursday: My son misses Minecraft. Refrigerator magnet Minecraft block magnets on the fridge make him nostalgic when he comes downstairs. 

Friday:  Friday night is pizza night. Instead of pizza and a movie, we invite friends over for pizza and charades. My children don’t get me acting out “Harry Potter” even though I use ‘sounds like’ to get to “Hair-see Pot-fur” and draw a lightning bolt scar on my own forehead. Husband laughs. Later he refuses to shout out “Ice Age” from “Mice Rage”. He enjoys my silent depiction of rodent fury.

Saturday:  Rainy and cold. A day made for movies. Instead we did some grim DIY. Wonder about the anti-austerity protests in London.  Activist news is mostly found on social media. Today we felt a little deprived.

Sunday:   We have a BBQ in the evening to get through the home stretch. Weather good. Son helps with the strawberries. He and his friend develop a sort of cage fighting game on the trampoline and daughter improves on the slack line.   

Signed back on to Facebook today to see a torrent of postings about racism in wake of the shooting in Charleston. It seems oddly impotent to me. At the beginning of the screen free week, I felt like my being Administrator of Occupy Movement - Cambridge was  almost 'essential work' (permitted by the rules of screen free week).I guess by the end it didn't seem like that as much.  There are the people who get shot and the people on the streets and the people doing things and then there are the people on FB. FB seems impotent to make the changes we want to see in the world. It only gives a transitory satisfaction in that moment when you say what your friends knew what you were going to say anyway. In that blue square with the friendly f, everyone agrees with me about sexism, racism, consumerism, the human rights crisis and capitalism eating the rule of law and democracy. And you know what, that and $8.00 will get me a bagel at Newark Airport. It's nothing. It's not enough. And while I was tired after the weekend of high-octane fun, I missed the kids on Monday.