Illiteracy is on the rise in this country. It could be blamed on Bill “Bubba” Clinton, the former Governor of Arkansas, who celebrated when his state went from, as he put it, “56th to 49th in literacy,” or our schools, and even video games come into play.
I really think that irresponsible companies are at fault. It’s not the dumping of toxic waste into streams which eventually seep into the groundwater, or global warming, or even the hairspray output of Donald Trump. I put the entire blame on advertisers.
Last week, I took my nephew Ben to Dunkin Donuts and he is at that age where he spells everything out loud. We got our bagels and chocolate milk and sat down and of course I got lots of napkins and sugar for my tea (you can’t have a morning bagel without tea). We found a table off to the side which is tough to do in Dunkin Donuts. All of the tables seem like they’re in the way of everybody as opposed to in Starbucks where the tables are in the cave-like dark corners with the lighting of a dinner theater.
The napkins were stacked neatly on the table and he asked for a few to smear the crease cheese around his face with which is what kids do with napkins. He put the napkin down and, pointing his finger on each letter one at a time, he spelled out D-O-N-U-T-S; then he said doughnuts. For the rest of the day, he kept respelling the word and wobbling around with that Robert De Niro like swagger as if had just shot a member an opposing crime family. No amount of distraction, confusion, or bribing could get him to stop repeating it.
I dropped him off that night and the next morning my brother called and asked “what the hell are you teaching my kid?” I was an English major in college and the rules of English have been drilled into my head like, well like getting stuff drilled into my head. I realized I’m fighting a losing battle with companies who use repetition in advertising to confuse us into illiteracy.
A week later, my brother reluctantly let me take his son out again. It took a week of my nephew watching Sesame Street and half a dozen Ritalin induced cocktails to get the donuts debacle behind us. This time I was going to take him to the toy store for an educational toy that might pull said nephew a couple of points higher than Jonathan, that pretentious private-nursery-school kid, who lived a few doors down from Ben. It also reminded me that I needed Jonathan’s help syncing my iPod to a new laptop.
I mapped out a driving route that avoided all Dunkin Donuts and Krispy Kreme franchises for that matter which isn’t an easy thing to do. What is it with pastries franchises anyway? Is being illiterate a prerequisite to success in the doughnut world?
Charting a course for the toy store was no easy task. I had to travel, literally, over the river and through the woods to get to said toy store. The store I chose was, of course, Toys “R” Us and I soon as I pulled into the parking lot and saw the big sign out front, I realized I was digging the hole even deeper. The great people of Toys “R” Us have taken it on as their mission to help a failing education system drag down even further by not only misspelling one of the words in their name, but by putting that letter backwards on their logo.
Before sweet little Ben’s feet had hit the ground of the toy store parking lot, he began spelling, or rather misspelling, the middle word. He just kept saying “R-R-R-R-R” like a pirate with a stutter. I explained to Ben that the misspelled R part was the toy store being silly and the proper way to spell R was A-R-E. Ben queried me and I wasn’t sure what query meant but I never let on that I didn’t know so I Googled it from my phone. He asked me “if they both sound the same, why do you need all of those extra letters?” I wasn’t exactly sure why and it seemed that the extra letters didn’t really make any sense. I’d love to single the Toys “R” Us people out but they’re not alone.
The educational toys did nothing for Ben and he really wanted the battery operated kind with all of the bells and whistles. I hate the noises those things make and they fact that they require batteries that sometime cost more than the toy itself. We went to the small dark corner of the store that had the vintage toys I played with as a kid. We picked up a tube of Pick Up Stix by RoseArt and Ben’s eyes went straight to Stix. “S-T-I…”
We headed back to the house and a ‘Kars 4 Kids’ billboard slapped me in the face but I saw it before Ben and I was able to distract him. Once at home, I sought the safety of the television and Saturday morning cartoons. Bugs Bunny was on; you can never go wrong with The Bugs. I was feeling safe until I realized Mr. Bunny is produced by the fine people at Looney Tunes. One could argue that both of those words are spelled incorrectly. Looney is more commonly spelled as loony and Tunes means music rather than Toons as in cartoons. And following Looney Tunes cartoons was always Merrie Melodies.
We shut off the television and went to the kitchen for a snack. I opened the cupboard and pulled out a couple of Milk ‘N Cereal bars and I screamed and dropped them as if I’d been bitten; I realized that I was trapped in a world of illiteracy and the walls were closing in fast. Right next to the bars was Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and the last time I checked, craft was spelled with a C and not a K. The Kraft people, not coincidentally, also make Shake ‘n Bake and Cheeze Whiz and Handi-Snacks and Kool-Aid. It seems as though the guy who lost in the spelling bee named their products. Kraft Foods has probably been responsible for more illiteracy than any other company I can think of.
Kraft isn’t alone and there are co-conspirators lurking around every corner. The Maid-Rite restaurant franchise doesn’t seem ‘made right’ because they can’t ‘spell right.’ Any company called Qwest or Krazy or Xtreme or Kidz or Krackers or Skool I can do without. There’s Sweet’N Low and Linens-n-Things and Soft & Dri and Phat Farm and Chick-fil-A and Wal-Mart (wait, that’s a family name) and Tastee Freez and Kit Kat and and Flickr and Rice Krispies and Oreo Double Stuf and Blu-Ray and Google; it’s a conspiracy and they’re all in this together.
It seems that our kid’s scores fall as their profits rise; I guess the theory is that they need to help create illiterate kids who become unintelligent adults who will one day buy their products. I’d love to keep writing but this whole situation has me depressed; I’m going to grab some Sno-Caps and pop in a Blu-ray.
