Sometimes, when you least expect it, you’re reminded how out of it you’ve become.
That’s how it was, recently, when I went to lunch with two svelte, single, child-free girlfriends. One of them escorted—more like pulled, I didn’t realize there were stairs—me into a chichi sushi restaurant I’d never heard of, and marched right up to a hostess she appeared to know.
“Don’t YOU look fabulous,” said the hostess, stating the obvious. This girlfriend, who I’ll call GF1, was decked out in a white empire-waist mini-dress with three-inch heels, a matching umbrella, and coiffed, cropped hair.
I sidled up, I hoped unnoticed, in my orthopedic Dansko's, khakis, and brown tank smeared with deodorant and milk. The deodorant was a result of my poor aim and chronic inability to remember to apply it after I get dressed. The milk was from Punk’s morning ritual of testing his bottle’s spray arc.
Once seated, GF1 said she would have the usual, and didn’t bother opening her menu. I, meanwhile, sweated over hundreds of options and babbled about how I’d eat sushi all the time if I could.
Right then, GF2, also spectacularly attired, breezed in. And the conversation proceeded as follows:
GF2: You know, I’d also eat sushi all the time, except I don’t want to end up like Jeremy Piven.
GF1: Ha ha ha ha ha.
Me: [Blank]
GF2: Yeah, we were all set to see Speed-the-Plow on Broadway when he pulled out.
GF1: Oh please. Like he really got mercury poisoning from sushi. Whatever.
Me: Umm. Who’s Jeremy Piven?
[Pregnant pause]
GF2: C’mon. You know who Jeremy Piven is.
GF1: [To the rescue] Entourage. From Entourage.
Me: Uh. I don’t watch Entourage.
[Longer pregnant pause]
To help me save face, the girlfriends launched into Piven’s filmography. The Kingdom? Nothing. RocknRolla? Nothing. Grosse Pointe Blanke….from like 1997? Vague flicker of recognition.
OK never mind. The conversation turned to GF1’s recent girls’ trip to South Beach:
GF1: It wasn’t DC, for sure. Our hotel had a topless bar on the roof.
GF2: Must’ve been lots of plastic at that bar. And not just in the credit cars buying the drinks.
Me: Blank.
Me: Is South Beach in Florida or California?
I can’t even describe the looks that comment prompted: a mix of pity and horror.
Look, sorry, but I’m a journalist. I will always ask the stupid question. Always. I think people are often amazed at the stupidity of my questions. I’m sure they’re thinking, “For crying out loud. I would never ask that out loud. How embarrassing. I would just go home and Google it.”
I just ask the question. I don’t care. I’m not going to sit there and pretend I know something I don’t. If I weren’t a salt-aholic I would ask what that white stuff is.
Still, pre-kids, I was respectably pop-culture savvy—I could quote whole scenes from Sex and the City—so I felt pretty square after that lunch. To test my level of fossilization, I posted a question on Facebook: Am I the only person on the planet who doesn’t know Jeremy Piven got mercury poisoning from ODing on sushi?
Within seconds, I got this response from three different people: “Yep.”
I thanked them for the vote of confidence.
The comments continued, with a co-worker saying I needed to hang out in her office more, and me casually responding that, being a mother of two three-year-olds, I am seriously in need of anti-Teletubbies intel.
Within minutes, there was flurry of responses from parents. Apparently, I am not the only parent suffering brain rot from kids’ programming.
The gist of the comments was this: First, no more Teletubbies. Banish them from the house. Do the same with any Barney or Boohbahs. One friend noted that comedian Lewis Black said he went back for a second vasectomy after seeing Boohbahs.
Second, the parents said, get yourself HBO and get yourself some Entourage.
Sheesh. I thought I’d get an outpouring of support—sympathy for being sentenced to watch a barrage of under-five programming and being screamed at to change the channel when feebly attempting to view adult shows. From my three-almost-four-year-olds, the charge is always, “It’s too scareeeeeeeeee!” And it’s hard to argue with that.
But these parents were telling me to take back the television. Trouble is, I have no idea how.
Maybe the parents’ point is that, after the kids go to bed, we should stay up and ram in every possible popular program—Entourage, Mad Men, Weeds, you name it—so we can talk the hip talk as needed.
For me, not gonna happen. The kids exhaust me, so I go to bed right after them. And if I do happen to stay up a bit later, I go for geeky nature and medical shows. Or the Weather Channel. I freakin’ love the Weather Channel.
So, what parents like me need is some sort of pop-culture coach. Or a Web site—a Cliffs Notes on pop culture for parents of small children. I, for one, would be on there all the time, orthopedic shoes propped up on my desk.
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