I don’t let my kids watch much TV. We don’t have cable, so of the 3 or 4 channels that come in clearly, the only thing ever worth looking at is PBS. On a good day they get to watch a half our episode of ZOOM or Sagwa. Anyway, sometimes I watch Oprah–when the contents of the show won’t emotionally scar my kids for life. You know, shows about how dad’s rape and beat their wives and children then go on to find new wives and children to destroy, or shows about how wonderful Sex in the City is. I don’t watch those. But if it is something about moms making millions working from home or feeding African children I’ll watch it.

And with Oprah comes comercials.

Brenna remembers everything she hears. And commercials are so convincing. Last winter she mentioned daily how she needed a certain lotion because she had “winter itch.”

On Saturday we ran around from store to store getting stuff together to make Halloween costumes and more wood for me to make spindles and other errands. I had already sat through a 3 hour meeting that morning and was just feeling tired. My neck hurt, my jaw hurt, my shoulders hurt…so I told Barry. Brenna overheard and said,

“You have a tension headache–you know, with pain in the neck and shoulders. You need Excedrin Tension Headache medicine. It’s for tension headaches, with pain in the neck and shoulders.”

Now, I’m sure you’ve seen the tension headache comercials. Who wrote those? Who directs those? Who, in real life talks like that? You can see the commas when those poor actors plagued with tension headaches are looking piercingly into the camera. They annoy me and I laugh at them.

But they’ve got Brenna convinced!