A Lesson on Parental Controls...

My husband and I were looking forward to the bonus sleeping in day that 4th of July would bring to our household. On these special days, and Saturdays, our kids sneak into our room to ask very quietly and politely to turn on cartoons. We, of course, oblige, choosing to join them on the couch or lounge around lazily in our bed, sun shining through the window. But this morning brought one of the boys back into our room, after "remote difficulties," shall we say.

In retrospect, I was thankful to have left my bed on the first request from the boys. I sleepily walked around the corner to find my to boys, ages 4 & 6, innocently staring at two women with two very full sets of orbs, helping each other out of their bras, making noises that even I don't when I am doing so myself. Shocked...I covered what I could, hurried the children out of the living room and returned shortly thereafter to find the women now oiling {yes, oiling} each other!! As I frantically hit buttons to turn it off or at least mute the darn thing, I couldn't believe what I was seeing as it quickly got worse and worse!!! {Does your panic ever cause you to freeze and lose the ability to perform easy tasks...like turning off the TV???} Once off, I am feeling relieved that my 8 year old was still asleep, as I'd have more explaining to do to he-who-asks-20-questions-about-and remembers-everything.

I find myself heading straight to the office to call the cable company. Mind you, it's 7:30am, and I already feel the need to call the cable company to have them remove the movie from my account because, 1) it's in my rentals to resume at the touch of a button and 2) there are children in the house, and 3) I'm wondering how it is so easy for a 6 year old to push buttons and order such a thing! {Unfortunately, in our cable company, the regular folk movie channels are right up next to the PPV ones, which probably led to our little mishap.}

At first, the gentleman that answered the phone was very unsympathetic, explaining to me that it is "near impossible" to order an "adult movie" by accident. At this point, I'm starting to wonder if it's actually common for people to order dirty movies early in the morning, have instant regret and remorse, and then call the cable company to beg them to remove it from their accounts for fear of random customer service agent judgement!

But once he hears my boys fighting in the background, he becomes more sensitive to my situation, and helps me to set my parental controls on the cable box. {Which, by the way, is not an easy task to do without help.} When it was all said and done, my boys button pushing led to a $12.99 lesson in parental control settings. And in the progress, I'm pretty sure I earned myself a nomination for mother-of-the-year too.  Fingers crossed no permanent damage was done ;)

{And please, no negative parenting comments. There is a human behind these writings!}