“There’s always a chance they’ll forget or make an exception,” he explained, declining to adduce evidence for that assertion.
Jerusalem, October 5 – A sixth-grader requested screen-time entertainment again this evening, hoping for an affirmative response from his parents despite an explicit household policy restricting such offerings to nights when he is not expected to get up at 6:30 a.m., and despite the negative response elicited in each of the nine dozen previous instances when he made such a request, family sources reported today.
Alon Segev, age 11, approached his father at about four in the afternoon today, and asked if he could watch a movie, according to witnesses. Eldad Segev, 46, said no, and pointed out that it was a school night – just as he had done in answering the same question more than a hundred times over the last several years. Alon, disappointed, considered asking his mother, but thought better of it.
“There’s always a chance they’ll forget or make an exception,” explained Alon, declining to elaborate on the evidence for that assertion, if any. “It’s the only thing to do I can think of,” he added, despite the presence in his bedroom, in other accessible areas of that Segev residence, of hundreds of books, a large number of games and toys – both Alon’s and communal ones – and a robust collection of arts and crafts supplies in the various cabinets, drawers, and shelves of the home.
Movies constituted a straightforward proposition in the Segev residence until last year, the family recalled, when the old VCR connected to the old television set in the guest room finally stopped working; a succession of used DVD players gave up their ghosts soon after. The 2000’s-era appliance sits inert atop a set of drawers, two of which contain the cassettes and discs that once provided easy entertainment. Now, Alon must rely either on stingy older siblings to share their phone screens with him, or on his parents to grant access to one of several computers – his first choice involves a laptop reserved for homework assignments, a fact of which his parents remind him each time he asks to use the machine for entertainment.
Family movie nights do take place, when Eldad sets up his own office computer with a big screen to stream a feature. A now-traditional viewing event will take place sometime in the next week and a half, when the family will set up a screen in their Sukkah to watch something together. That fails to satisfy Alon, however.
“It’s not fair,” he asserted. “They never let me do anything.”
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