My blog is messed up again so I’ll post this whenever I wake up tomorrow (hopefully my blog works by then.
It’s 3 am and my daughter who is the deep-thinking one of the 3 asked to sleep in my bed tonight, I know that she’s caught on to the fact that soon, I’ll be on the road again, I can tell it bugs her....come to find out she’s running a temperature AGAIN! ...seems like these bugs go from kid to kid and eventually bounce back to the first one....so I guess it’s her turn again...I was about to fall asleep when she stuck her knee in my back and woke me up! ugh!!! now I’m wide awake....I turned and looked at her and there she was...soundly asleep...I envied her for a minute....she looks so peaceful, getting her rest and dreaming about the Jonas brothers or her "glowy" teddy bear...or whatever you dream about when you’re 6...
I started thinking about the total and complete envelope of innocence that she’s in...she loves Jesus and sings Sunday School songs...she calls her brothers "immature" when they play with worms and pick up dead birds...the other day I think I adverted disaster when she asked..."Daddy, will I have a baby one day?" .....I thought to myself...NOOOOOOOOOOOOO no way, I’m not having this talk yet!!! helllllll no! so I said "of course" and changed the subject.....
Yes, I know....if her little inquisitive mind keeps bringing up the subject I will have to have a daddy/Victoria date over a chocolate chip frappucino with her...(yes, she requests it from Starbucks)....and explain the facts of life to her....I PRAY that I have 2 more years...
As I watched her sleep, and grew annoyed at my lack of sleep, I turned on the TV and there was Leno on the West-Coast, 2 am feed.....making off-the-wall comments about Britney Spears...I listened....and for some reason felt offended and dirty...I could not help but think about a time when somewhere, someone lay next to a little feverish Mouseketeer named Britney who was 6 years old....a little innocent little girl who’d never been in a music video, never befriended Paris Hilton, never been exploited by the media, the music industry, MTV, Rolling Stone, a country, and consequently a world of oversexed men AND women...me included...
I thought about her career and about the world and how it can turn on a dime...Britney broke ground with her music at about the time that I got married in 96/97...and how here I am 11 years later and it really does not seem like it was that long ago....but it’s been over a decade...I remember the first time that I saw the "Hit Me One More Time" video followed by an interview with her, and I remember thinking..."This is not the same girl as on the video!", the girl in the video was kinda....skanky, hot but skanky....this girl was sweet and looked.......innocent. Victoria slept soundly next to me under the glow of the television...
For some reason I had a vivid memory of a time when Britney was a guest on the Jay Leno show and I remembered thinking how well she did singing the song and dancing at the same time...I remember thinking how cool it was that she really was singing (you could tell that at some moments she’d get slightly pitchy, within reason, she’s dancing for crying out loud!) and remembering what a gentleman Leno was to her that night...as he usually is to his female guests...and then what a sujestive joke he had just made about her...
Since I always criticize people for being predictable, I am not going to be one and make this blog about what a hypocrite Jay Leno is....he did not make all of the bad decisions that Britney made in her life....she’s brought about her reputation on her own...made a spectacle of herself through her behaviour....non of it Leno’s fault...however, I can’t help but think of 2 things...
First, none of us can deny that at the age of 16...Britney’s first music video was nothing but an image that she had put on? is it not true that the Catholic School Girl slut that she protrayed was just an image? a "costume" if you will? now... can we also not say that Britney in 2008 does not fit in those clothes a whole lot better and aptly than back then in the late 90s? Is it perhaps that if you tell someone everyday..."You’re 99% sex, you’re 99% sex, you’re 99% sex" eventually they will take on the form of all that you’ve endoctrinated them to be?
Second, I ask...who benefitted from Britney’s image along her career? sure, of course Britney herself did, she’s made untold millions dancing suggestively....but what about the rest of us who were already grown and thinking beings when she broke as a teen-ager?....did we not watch her videos? did the labes not make millions off of her? did MTV not sell advertising through the roof with every video spin?, with every belly-button-baring special?, did women not catfight themselves into the last issue of People to get the latest on her and K-Mart-Fed? Did we not all somehow exploit her?....and yet we now hypocritically, condecendingly and self righteously shake our heads at the pictures of an out of control Britney, with her head shaved, broken by drug and alcohol abuse, crying over the loss of custody of her kids....and yet we’ll call her a slut and a freak when we all contributed our grain of sand to her demise? Again, we did not make her bad choices....she did....but God knows that without the adoration of countless fans and the comfort of millions of dollars, I’ve made bad choices that continue to haunt me to this day...
Victoria rolled over and mumbled something about Diego in her sleep....
And yet this is not a rant about how bad we are and how good Britney is...no, this is a father watching his 6 year old daughter sleep at 3 am...terrified of the world....thankful for a praying mother who daily bends her knees and prays God’s protection over her little grandaughter...and yet all I can do is teach her right from wrong, teach her self respect, teach her to value herself as God and her daddy do...teach her that money and material possesions are not everything and that kindness and charity are infinitely more valuable...
I look at myself and it challenges me to everyday want to be a better human being than the one I am today....for her sake and that of her brothers....UGH! another knee....this time to my ribcage...and as I cram a pillow between her and my dangerous child...I move the hair from her face and give her a kiss on the forehead...I smell her Strawberry Shortcake Shampoo...I love her so much...I will live for her, I would die for her...
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