It's the start of a new week with new possibilities and all those fun things, and I'm not feeling the positivity at all.
Except intense excitement that we are now connected to Disney + which is a great new distraction from life, especially when you get to indulge in nostalgia and reminisce on a time where your only troubles were that your parents were just way too strict and you wished you could get a boyfriend.
I blame TV shows of old (ok not THAT old) on this.
While drifting through TV shows that shaped our youth, Husband and I realised that they're partly to blame for our really skewed outlook on how life would be.
Take kissing in the rain, for example. This was the height of romance in the late 90s/early 00s, but was it ever a thing? I married someone who would complain extensively about getting wet and that there are dryer, warmer, more comfortable places to do this.
Then there's the somewhat haphazard parenting portrayed on these shows. Whilst reliving the badass Buffy, we totally got why "because, I said so" seemed like such a lazy response from our parents.
It didn't even take a full season for Buffy's mom to allow her to go to a club, on a school night! All she asked was "will there be boys there?" And that was just as a way to poke fun at her teenage daughter! I would've been threatened with being arrested by the police and my father having to bail me out of jail (this was really a threat used. I was petrified. I didn't set foot in a club before I turned 18 and then I still made sure I was home by 11). Then, to make matters worse, all the school kids are at this club, even the "school nerd" (that was a character back in the day, don't go boycott my stuff for this). All-in-all, I've made the decision that my children will watch this stuff when they're 30 or when they have kids of their own, because "I said so" is going to be repeated in their upbringing and I don't need "but Buffy did it" in my life.
Growing up didn't even help, because I still have to ask permission from my parents and/or in-laws to go out, because now I have to answer to three house gnomes...ok, I don't go out a lot...or at all. Partly because there's still a raging Covid pandemic out there, a little bit because Futurelife consumes all our finances and mainly because pyjamas and my couch seem like a much better idea.
So, South Africans, do yourself a favour, get Disney+ and watch those TV shows of old, revisit the teenage excitement and use it as a tool to make yourself feel so much better about your parenting. Also, watch it after bedtime, you don't need your kids to watch it with you.
New week, new something, old viewing.