Dear World,
I’ve been watching a lot of television lately. Tired, I guess.
I’m very good at doing nothing. It’s one of my many talents. I’m not sure how the kids get fed and clothed and the house remains (relatively) tidy.
No, that’s not true. It’s all Leigh. He gets stuff done. Like a marathon runner, he is very well-paced. He goes through life with consistency, routine, discipline and humour. Me, on the other hand, I do life in fits and spurts.
Every morning Leigh sets out a mug with a tea bag and sugar for me. A kind of cuppa-tea-starter-kit. It’s one way that he shows me he is thinking of me. I leave the squeezed, wet teabag on the bench and he discovers it ten hours later when he gets home from work. He’s a better person than I am.
Anyway, about the t.v watching…
I’ve just finished Season 3 of The Handmaid’s Tale on SBS. It wasn’t enough to just watch the show so I also listened to the SBS podcast ‘Eyes on Gilead’ where I could process it all with some other ladies who like to over-analyse everything. After episode 11 my English-teacher friend Fiona and I exchanged voice mail messages about plot predictions. It made my heart so happy.
I also watched Season 2, 3 and 4 of Last Man on Earth. This one makes me LOL because it is so ridiculous. It’s also good fuel for Vetland- the alternate reality my brain lives in when I’m driving, eating, helping with homework or in need of a tiny mental break from my 3-hour Pastoral Care lecture. It’s kind of like a Minecraft world but built only in my head. Lately, I’ve been imagining what life would look like if I was the last woman alive.
Right now I’m in a Drama Series on SBS called, ‘The Hunting’. It caught my attention because Asher Keddie is in it and Asher Keddie knows how to pick ‘em. The show is about Australian teenagers and the trouble they get into with their mobile phones. My kids aren’t teenagers yet and I have been out of the classroom for over a decade so I’m not sure if it’s an accurate depiction of the kinds of things that are going on in the lives of Aussie teens… but I get the sick feeling that it is.
If anyone else is watching, ‘The Hunting’- especially teachers and those with teenage kids, I’d love to know what you think? I think it might be Australia’s ’13 Reasons Why’, though hopefully it sparks better conversations and has better outcomes than the tragedy of that series.
My 12-year-old is asking for a mobile phone and I’ve told her she has to wait until she is 14. After watching this show, I’m thinking she’ll be getting a Samsung Dumbphone.
Yvette, I’ve watched two episodes. I felt I needed to, since this is what I’m dealing with everyday. My pastoral care group are Year 10 and we’re close. I found the show really confronting. I’m not usually a binge watcher, and I’m not sure if I can bring myself to go back and watch any more. While I haven’t had to deal with that issue personally, it feels too realistic and consequently really scary both as an educator and as a parent of a teen and preteen kids. I really really feel for our kids and the issues they are dealing with. Especially since the adults in their lives feel horrendously unprepared to help them with issues we never had to face.
Oh Nat, it would be so hard to be a teacher now. I can’t watch but also can’t look away from the young male teacher who is trying to help the kids. You can see that his heart is in the right place but his kindness and naivety is going to get him into trouble. He reminds me of myself when I was a young, sometimes stupid teacher. My daughter has Instagram but I have her log-in details and we’ve agreed I can log in any time. Apparently, a lot of kids have this arrangement with their parents but then they have a second account also that their folks don’t know about. I think the only way I can keep my kids safe is to have an excellent relationship with them so they want to tell me stuff. But what about the kids who can’t talk to their parents at all? (Like the character Dip.)
Episode 3 is so unfair it’s hard to watch but I want to know about this stuff.