Friday, May 8, 2009

It's the 4 year old version of "I slept with this girl. You don't know her. She lives in Canada."

Eli & I were on our way to a DC Metro Mom event sponsored by PBS Kids. Despite the fact that Eli is the single most outgoing child on the planet, I felt the need to prep him for the childcare situation:

SG: We're going to have such a good time. You're going to get to meet your new friend Quinn.
Eli: I already have a friend named Quinn. Can we go to McDonald's instead?
You have a friend named Quinn?
Yes. He's five and lives in New York.

Eli sounds so convinced that I believe him. I run through the various cousins and other people we lump in the "friend" category for someone named Quinn and come up blank.

Really? Where did you meet him?
I mean Paris. He lives in Paris. Now can we go to McDonald's?


Here's someone you don't get to meet at McDonald's. Or Paris.

All John Hughes movies aside (1) , it was fascinating to learn how much work and thought (2) PBSkids puts into each episode. They even shared with the DC Metro Moms the results of an independent study that showed that viewing episodes of SuperWhy helped low-income children improve their early literacy skills.

And all this time, SG was pushing PBS on her kids just to avoid the crush cup commercials.

1) An earlier draft referred to Eli's many friends named Quinn in the Niagra Falls area, having a fake ID so he could vote, his low tolerance to dehydration and warned that "if he gets up, we'll all get up. It'll be anarchy." But the nice people at PBS kids deserved better than that.
2) Someone who shall remain nameless could learn from them. Fine, I mean me.

7 comments:

TMCPhoto said...

We love PBS kids here. Our new favourite show is Sid The Science Kid and of course Sesame Street Rocks our mornings.

I have to say that I really enjoyed the failing attempts of Eli to skip everything and go to McDonalds instead. The earlier draft sounds like a thrilling John Hughes movie, perhaps you can post it at a later date with the names of the sponsors changed to protect their identities?

Beth said...

So, did he get to go to McDonalds?

I love his imagination!

elisa said...

Darn you Super Why! My sis-in-law got me hooked and we try to watch when we can. I didn't want to...but I like the show. Sigh. Seriously though, I'd much rather watch anything on PBS than anything else out there.

Marinka said...

I hate the New York/Paris Quinn. He's so fake.

dpaste said...

I hear that when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, everybody's gonna jump for joy.

Jennifer Mendelsohn said...

One of my all-time favorite New Yorker stories, about Adam Gopnik's daughter's imaginary friend, Charlie Ravioli.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/09/30/020930fa_fact_gopnik

Stimey said...

That is hilarious. When you told me that, I thought that he did actually have a friend named Quinn.

Also, is this your way of telling me that you want us to move to Paris?