The last thing you need is another post about how to prepare the Thanksgiving turkey. Who do you think I am, Tom Colicchio? (BTW, it’s Top Chef season again, as if I had to tell you).
No, I’m here to help you with a different dilemma: How to prepare your little city mice for mingling with the country mice.
I don’t know about your kids, but when my urban offspring get together with their suburban cousins, all sorts of comparisons are made about every day life. So before you pile into the car, jump on the train, or step into the pressurized cabin it’s best to teach ‘em how to appropriately respond to suburbanspeak such as, “Like, you wanna go to the mall?”
Of course, it’s important to first promote respect for various lifestyles. So, practice what you don’t preach and read them the politically correct “The City Kid & Suburban Kid“.
Then ditch being PC and pull out the heavy artillery. Look, it’s time your innocent babies learned that shopping centers, at least in part, caused the demise of Main Street. (You know, the one that Sarah Palin talked so lovingly about even though her own home town is basically one big ol’ strip mall.)
Feel free to try the subtle approach first. Check out the video game Mall Tycoon. Read the reviews; basically everyone says it’s a complete snorefest. Force the kids to play even though after 5 minutes they announce in their best whiny voices how booooooring it is. Reinforce over and over the association “mall = boring”.
The next step involves scaring the pants off of them. Find every book you can about getting lost in the mall. One example is Dakota Gets Lost. Skip the happy endings where things work out and stop at the point where the kid is crying and can’t find Mommy or Daddy or Aunt Camilla anywhere.
After that it’s time to put that final nail in the, er coffin. Rent the original Dawn of the Dead (1978). What’s it about? Flesh-eating zombies snacking on humans stuck inside….tada!…a shopping mall.
Seriously. The majority of movie takes place in Monroeville Mall, a honest-to-goodness real, live shopping mall located outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
If you complete each of these steps, it’s a pretty safe bet that once you touch down in Suburbia and the cousins suggest a mall outing for fun, your little ones will chime in with something akin to “Um, can’t we go to the local museum instead?”
And if they don’t, whisper quietly in their ears that the mall the cousins want to take them to is Monroeville Mall. That oughta do the trick.
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ParentZing! Perk: Skip the mall and shop online for that new luggage you need. Use the code LP20PERNOV to save 20% at LuggagePoint.com. (Expiry November 28, 2008).
I live in Pittsburgh and it’s true, that really is the Mall where they filmed Dawn of the Dead a million years ago. The mall actually hosted a reunion for the “Zombies”. I grew up in this area and my uncle claims that he and his friend were Zombie extras.
Nice to see a little humor about the holidays rather than just the usual basting the turkey post (which I was actually looking for!) so i was glad to stumble on this and get a laugh, especially being from the area and knowing it is true!
Thanks.