Target is our Hope

We live in a silly place called "New England," where people waste their free time over the weekends in September and October attending these absurd events known as "fairs." They generally involve live animals in pens, biggest-pumpkin types of contests ending in the awarding of blue ribbons, cotton candy, carnival rides, live music, the smell of early autumn leaves in the air... Basically, a gigantic fiasco.

Ian, however, has carefully planned this Saturday afternoon, for all of us. It involves driving to a department store known as Target, purchasing toys and games, and coming home to play with them. Consumers such as Ian are the life-blood of our economy; without them, capitalism would come crashing to the ground, like a bicycle whose shiftless socialist conductor has suddenly elected not to pedal, on the premise that the "community" would somehow keep the craft in motion through some kind of transcendent collective well.

No, Ian has very concrete plans, and they come together perfectly: purchase the merchandise, come home, and consume.

So he's very unhappy that I'm planning on dragging him and Daniel to a county fair, and he told me, with the standard impeccable logic, that

1. Mommy said we could go wherever we want to, and we want to go to Target.

and

2. He had already promised Daniel and Madeleine that we would pursue this superior agenda, and he doesn't want to let them down.

I told that he wouldn't have to let them down; I would let them down instead. He wasn't comforted by this nuance. I asked him, without a hint of concern, whether they had gotten their hopes up. He wasn't familiar with the idiom, so I explained it.

Within a few minutes, he was back to the Target campaign, only now, with a new slogan:

Daddy! Their hopes are high!

(September 10, 2011)