Seven minutes in heaven.

Do you remember that game? A bunch of kids play a game wherein two of the kids get to go to a secluded place and do whatever they want for seven minutes. Sometimes it was on a dare, and sometimes it was in the dark and you didn't even know who you were in heaven with. Gross. Scary. I never played, I swear. And a hell of a lot more frightening than *gasp* letting our kids listen to the President of the United States for fifteen minutes in a brightly lit classroom surrounded by their classmates and teachers.

I am boggled by the "outrage" over this coming week's planned telecast to our kids by our President. I do understand there was some verbiage that caused concern and I, for the most part, agreed with the sentiment that it had socialist undertones. If you chose to hear them that way. Which I do. But that is a moot point, the speech has been altered and I find the new message acceptable.

Does our President have an agenda? Well of course he does! I think that much is clear to all of us, kool-aid drinkers or not. So I am wondering if the parents who refuse to allow their kids to view next week's speech run their kids out of the room every time the man speaks on tv, or refuse to allow them to hear or read anything he has to say? That may prove to be pretty difficult after a while. And how great an opportunity is this to talk to our kids about politics? Yes, I mean actually sit down with them and have a dialogue, an exchange of ideas, questions and answers. It's radical, but it works for us.

And dare I ask this, but do we really expect our kids to pay close attention to this speech, and furthermore actually recall what was said later? If I had a dime for every "I don't know" I have gotten when I asked my kids what they did in school that day, I would be writing this post from paradise. But alas, I am still here in Northern Virginia, where my kids attend school in a liberal county, and learn liberal ideology from liberal teachers, and yet they are nowhere near being liberal. I don't think a few minutes with a liberal President is going to change that. No, college will change that.

Seven minutes in heaven is still out there. Drugs are still out there. Predators are still out there. Bullies are still out there. Our President may be a little "out there" for me too, but I would much rather expose my kids to his ideas than those things. My kids are hitting puberty. They are freaking out over pimples and body hair. The prospect of facing the ultimate horror of horrors, junior high! (Or was that just me?) My kids have been to four funerals for dear loved ones this year and are facing yet another very soon. So maybe the whole speech saga is lost on me because I have much bigger mountains to climb with my kids. But surely, there must be more important things in everyone's life to fret over than a few minutes of screen time for our children with the first black President of our country.