The Reader's Eye on Television

Author

By Ollie

Publish Date

Jan. 5, 2006

She sits like a stack of deli meats, all mounded up and sliding off of herself. Purple straps and black straps from tank tops and bras try to restrain her soft bubbles of flesh. Engorged orbs sit atop pregnant belly and roll around when she moves. And straps catch and tug and hold like a suspension bridge, crossing her neck and fastening behind. Her auburn pony-tailed head turns toward me and I see that she's drinking water not coffee, eating spinach and eggs, not pancakes and syrup. She's telling her friend, "I've been eating so well. For the baby. I'm not even THINKING of bad foods. I don't even crave chocolate." And, she beams in her friends' approval. Her skin is hot and lemon in the crashing sunlight from the front window of the café.

She is a teenager, a daisy of spring. Her boyfriend has braces and holds her hand across the table and his head turns to one side and his eyes are blind with a milky film that prevents him from seeing what is really happening. And, he grins a chrome grin. In my mind I grab his ear and pull it back and yell, "What are you, stupid? You didn't have a condom? She couldn't get the pill? You have GODDAMN BRACES!" But that wouldn't help.

I open my notebook to start a letter to someone, a senator, a school board supervisor. It starts:

Dear Sir,

Roll back the sexual revolution. Roll it back to the 1940s. Roll it back past the '60s. Put Will back in the closet and make Grace a pudgy housefrau. Confiscate all copies of Laugh In and burn anything remotely involved with James Bond. Start television shows about how teens ruined their lives with pregnancy.

Teach kids that sex will make them prematurely gray and make their skin break out. Teach them that they'll go blind. The ones who do get pregnant? Mail them off to nunneries.

Is this the wisest course of action? No. Does it show the benevolence of a thinking society? No.

But, kids are too stupid to understand anything else. By the time they're in their 20s they'll figure out, "Hey, all that was a bunch of bull. Let's do it. All the time. A lot." And by then they'll be smart enough to handle it. But, until then, keep them dumb and scared. Because, look. Look at the pretty girl with the round belly in the front window of the café and think of the tears she'll cry in 15 years when she's still young and her ass is fat and she's a grandmother.

WHAT I WILL AND WON'T WATCH THIS WEEK