I’m sorry I cannot partake in your conversation

For you see, I have children

Photo by Papaioannou Kostas on Unsplash

When I became a parent, I made an 18-year commitment to being pop culturally irrelevant, which is why I must decline your invitation to join “The Last of Us” discourse. Or any discourse on any piece of pop culture longer than a YouTube video. Please respect this decision as I mumble into a pile of Lite Brite pegs on my living room floor.

I used to know pop culture things. I had to. I worked at cool magazines in LA and had to know what all the things were. I would go to movies, I’d watch TV series, and I’d know who sang the songs on the radio. Bonding over funny movie quotes at parties was something I could do, and I held very strong opinions about which cop show was the best cop show of all time. (The Shield.) Then we had children. Two of them. At the same time. (And by “we” I mean my wife. I was mainly in the delivery room for support. I’ve been more useful since then.)

Those first months, we had to keep the kids on a strict feeding schedule, so we traded off shifts and watched a lot of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in the middle of the night. Can’t hear the theme song without remembering feeding two kids in the dark while I struggled to function as a human being. (True story: I once somehow brought diapers to work in my lunch bag. Unused. How this happened, I’ll never know. It’s not like a fresh diaper and a salad from Trader Joe’s look the same. Anyways, this is why I have my own show on TLC where I stress-eat baby hygiene products.)

Curb was my last touchstone with pop culture, and it holds a special place. You’re stressed when you’re sleepless and taking care of two tiny babies for the first time while also working and owning a dog and not letting your apartment devolve into something a goat would rummage through while looking at you thankfully. Curb gave us a place to unload all that stress with laughter. Larry David’s ability to fully monetize his anxiety kept us sane.

As kids grow beyond the stage where you must do everything for them, they somehow take up more of your energy. By the time ours were 1, my wife insisted on taking them places. I would sometimes object – they won’t remember anything before they turn 4! WE WON’T GET CREDIT FOR THIS! “Hey, kids, remember when mom and dad hadn’t slept for two days, and we drove two hours to take you to the aquarium when you were 18 months old?” “Noooo. Can I watch YouTube now?”

Let’s just stay home, I’d say to my wife, and quietly stare at a wall.

But she insisted that exposing the kids to the world and various stimuli might aid in their development, or at the very least it would get her out of our home so that she wasn’t trapped in there with me, which, OK, that’s fair. I’m not sure how much of me I’d be able to take either without wanting to shove my hands into a pool of stingrays.

When kids reach a certain age, you sign them up for activities. My parents’ generation didn’t have activities. All the kids lived in the same neighborhood. The activities were things like, go into the woods with 20 other kids for 10 hours and come home alive by dinner. But then when we suburbanized America, and everyone got all spread out, there were no 20 kids, and there was no woods. Your kid now has two friends, and they both live 20 minutes away in opposite directions, and no one’s been bold enough to make an Uber you can dump your kids into, so for your kids to stay active and fit you drive them all over to activities like swimming, dance, ice skating, soccer, and camp.

These activities, as parents know, eat up every single minute of your time. Yeah, I’d like to see the new “Avatar” movie with you, but the kids have pickleball camp. Sorry.

The only new pop culture we’ve been able to experience over the last seven years occurs on nights when we have enough energy to stay awake past 8:30 PM (rare) and can agree on something we both want to watch. This arrangement eliminates vast portions of TV and movies, as I mainly like shows with swords and grunting, and she mainly likes drunken dating shows. The couple things we’ve watched: Stranger Things, Cobra Kai and music documentaries about Biggie Smalls. Plus, other stuff I don’t really remember. It hasn’t been much.

Musically, I remain trapped in a pre-2015 artist playlist. I’m sure some new artists have emerged since then. I just don’t know them. I hate when older people make the “I’m so old I don’t know the music anymore” jokes because that’s lame. The music industry has always been aimed mainly at 14-year-olds. By the time you’re 24, you’ve aged out of the demo. But there is always good new music. I want to know who SZA is, I really do, but the Pickleball Regionals are this weekend and it’s our turn to buy the oranges.

Way back, before we had kids, I remember being with my married friends, and all they could talk about was their kids. I used to chalk it up to narcissism.

“Everyone thinks their kids are soooo great, and that’s why they won’t stop talking about them. But if everyone’s kids are great, then no one’s kids are great. Your kids are not great. Stop talking about them.”

But now I understand. I get it.  We talk about our kids nonstop because it’s what we spend all our time doing. There is nothing else.

I’m watching a show every day called, “My kids are growing up.” It’s hilarious, and it has many twists and turns, and sometimes it’s also sad, but the main characters keep learning lessons and growing along the way.

The parents are two of the main characters.

They’re mainly in the show for the first 18 seasons.

Then the kids get spinoff shows of their own.

Which I look forward to watching.