Wiggles-Induced Misbehavior in the House of Convalescence

Today was a sick day at the olde homestead. Ian has a fever, Madeleine has bronchitis, Daniel has a cough, and Amy has the flu. That's four out of five of us. So needless to say, our house has become a Netflix Free-Downloadable Kids Movie Festival.

After Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang, Short Circuit, Short Circuit 2, and probably others, we finally got around to watching one of Daniel's choices, rather than Ian's, which, of course, turned out to be a Wiggles collection of "international" songs, where they dress up like 19th-century Greek peasant porcelein dolls from an Athens Airport duty-free gift shop and sing "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" which, by the way, is "Me kaneis na khorevo." They also sing La Bamba dressed as "Spaniards", "Old Dan Tucker" dressed like the cast of Gunsmoke, and other gems, with appropriate garb in all cases.

It turned out that Ian didn't want to watch The Wiggles, so he began a relentless campaign, lobbying non-stop for Veggie Tales (Jonah) and pointing out to Daniel, "Daniel, all day long you begged me to let you watch Scooby-Doo, and now I'm going to let you watch it," or something to that effect. But Amy and I both felt that it was definitely time to give Daniel a turn, even if it made the other three of us wince (although it did, apparently, make both Daniel and Madeleine "feel like dancing" right in front of the screen).

But Madeleine kept standing in front of the screen, and Daniel kept trying to get her to move, and finally he resorted to shoving, which led to an immediate "video time-out" and much recrimination.

However, Ian's campaign for anything-but-the-Wiggles was only strengthened by this development. He pointed out to me, ''Maybe this is the way he behaves when he watches The Wiggles."

The true art of opportunism is knowing how to turn every event to your favor without missing a beat.

(October 31, 2009)