It’s hard to wrangle a midget into a tiny suit of armour for a jousting competition when he’s been eating too many Nutty Buddies.

That wasn’t the opening i was originally gonna go with. This entry is about day care, so i was gonna say something like “it’s hard to get daycare in Toronto,” but if i were reading someone’s blog and i didn’t have any children, i would stop reading after that sentence. So i thought i’d maybe open with a fanciful tale about my idea for Mini-Medieval Times and then segue gracefully into my story about the Worst Day Care in the World, but i’ve blown it. This has NOT been a graceful segue. But maybe even if you don’t have kids and you’ve read this far, and you don’t feel too burned by being tricked into reading a story that ISN’T actually about hilarious 4-foot chivalry … maybe then, you’ll be prepared to keep reading.

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There are a few hackneyed narrative devices, most often used in kids’ entertainment where the little tykes are too stupid to know any better, which have to stop. i am tired of seeing them, yet i see them again and again. And again.

And again and again.

Here are a few examples:

(just after the climax of the movie) Hooray! Main Character saved us all! Thank you, Main Character! You were so brave! …. Main Character? Are … are you alright! Oh no! Main Character isn’t moving! Main Character is … is dead! Oh boo hoo hoo! It can’t be! Main Character can’t be dead!

Wh… whaa? Main Character blinked his eyes and/or started coughing slash climbed back up the edge of the cliff he just flew off. Hooray!! Main Character is alive after all! Yipee!!

…

It’s at this point in the movie that a bit of the magic is lost, because i’m too busy punching some unsuspecting kid in the throat. Popcorn everywhere. But why oh WHY do i have to endure the same crummy predictable scene in movie after movie? Is there some kind of paint-by-numbers kit that writers buy, and they assemble movies by drawing hack scenes from a box at random?
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i didn’t really know what i should be thinking as i stood there, head bowed, while someone counted down two minutes of silence.

Every year, Canada reserves two whole minutes of quiet time to reflect on the “sacrifice made by our ancestors” in the two World Wars. i place “sacrifice made by our ancestors” in quotation marks not to be cheeky or provocative, but only to phrase it the way it’s always phrased by folks every November.

What does everyone else think about when they’re standing there in silence? i’m a Christian … oftentimes, i pray to God and thank him for the life of luxury we lead now thanks to the crummy trench warfare those young guys endured in the Great War … but this was the first year i felt supremely awkward about that sentiment. It’s hitting me harder and harder that the distribution of wealth on this planet is a crying shame. “Thanks, fellas, for making sure that I don’t it as bad as everyone else on this planet.” It doesn’t seem right.

But in the absence (or, more accurately, the perceived absence) of God, what does everyone else think about? Do they try to work themselves up emotionally by replaying scenes from Saving Private Ryan in their heads? Do they focus on the black-and-white photos of their granparents and great grandparents hanging in the stairwell of their childhood home, and try to fantasize those people back to life in some garish technicolor costume drama with a nostalgic 30’s tune on scratchy vinyl comprising the clichéed soundtrack?

i had even more trouble with it on Saturday because of where i was standing - not in front of an array of poppy wreaths laid on an obscure monument that you drive by every day without noticing, but in a room full of five hundred enlistment-aged young men at a video game seminar. Far from the lean, noble and heart-breakingly innocent-looking soldiers we’re used to seeing in those black-and-white photographs, these “men” were doughy, pasty and slouching mockeries of that youthful and clean-cut ideal … myself included. They were a cynical crowd of unapologetic nerds, concerned only with quoting teevee programs like The Family Guy and trading insults over which video game system was better. i wonder what was going through their minds when, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, all sweaty five hundred of them were asked to get to their feet and reflect in silence for two minutes.

Two minutes! You could play a whole multiplayer round of Gears of War in that time! Gears of War - the hot new release this year that had fictional soldiers fighting a noble, fictional war against a fictional enemy, cutting them fictionally in half with an immensely fictional chainsaw bayonet.

But that was one thing. Gears of War was entertainment. The game that opened the seminar was Call of Duty 3, a first person shooter modelled after a real battlefield from real World War II, where you use digital weaponry modelled after real guns to virtually kill enemies who were real people. If Gears of War is entertainment, then this is … this is educational! Call of Duty 3 is a way for me to connect with history … a way for me to truly experience the sacrifice that my grandparents and great-grandparents made for their children and their children’s children - a sacrifice made for me - all running in high definition at a totally sweet 60 frames per second with 5.1 surround sound.

When the two minutes of silence was over, we all sat down and sunk back into safe and familiar territory - learning about how to make video games to play for fun and to sell for profit. i couldn’t help but feel immensely grateful to those other generations of young men who fought so hard and risked so much, so that our generation could kick back on a Saturday afternoon with some beer and a bag of chips, to enjoy their pain as our entertainment.

Addendum:

Alongside its Playstation 3 console, Sony launched a game called “Resistance: Fall of Man”, which “reimagines” World War II by swapping out Nazis for machine gun-wielding aliens. Because as fun as it is, WWII just isn’t entertaining enough for some people’s tastes.