Oct 1, 2004 5 min read

Daughter No. 3, the recently turned teen, and I tuned into our next reality TV show. She has watched Fear Factor since its debut, but other than that, we have walked around as morons during the last few television seasons.

Everyone else is talking about survivors of amazing races called into the boardroom by The Donald as their homes are demolished and rebuilt, ditto with body parts in their quest to win a marriage proposal after being locked in a house with no outside contact for weeks on end.

Or something like that.

So we decided that we would watch one episode of each reality show. Now who’s the moron?

Our first show was Big Brother because No. 3’s friend said she had to hurry home one night to tune in. So we thought OK, let’s watch.

My guess is this show requires a long-term commitment from beginning to end. No. 3 tried to explain about challenges and immunity and keys and heads of household and a brother and sister who didn’t know they had a sibling until they showed up in a house where identical twins played tag team. We gave up. We still don’t know who won or what he or she won, so yes we are still morons.

Then we watched something called “Renovate My Family” where the television team found a Gothic mom who was engaged to a fellow band member Goth.

Together they were raising three kids – two Goths, one regular – with a coffin in their living room. They knocked down the house in the first few minutes. We just knew the construction crew with buxom blonde triplets (We started to catch on that reality TV must include at least one set of multiple births and a gallon of peroxide.) would rebuild the house within the hour.

The family posed a trickier problem, as the show would include a wedding. Whatever could they do to turn that bizarre looking mom into a normal bride? At each commercial break, No. 3 and I debated what they would do with her thin-lined eyebrows that arched so far up her forehead that they nearly touched her scalp.

But they pulled it off or should I say, they drew it on. Anyway, the last part of the show in which all the renovations were revealed consisted of this dialogue: “Ohmygawd. Ohmygawd. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Ohmygawd. Ohmygawd.”

No. 3 and I have found that this phrase appears in most reality TV scripts, so we have it memorized just in case we should return home some day to find a limousine waiting to whisk us away.

We have gone so far as to practice hopping in place and putting our hands in front of our mouths while screaming, “Ohmygawd. Ohmygawd.”

We have acted it out as a phrase of glee, one of astonishment and one that depicts “Oh no what have I gotten myself into.”

We can rattle it off in rapid fire, “ohmygawdohmygawdohmygawd.” Or draw out the vowels, “oooooooh myyyyyyy gaaaaaaawd.”

It’s a one-phrase fits all, and we are so ready.

Then we watched our next reality TV show: Trading Spouses. In this show, or at least the episode we saw, an uptight fanatically strict housekeeping mom traded families with a slovenly loudmouth anything-goes-as-long-as-its-fun mother. The husbands and kids had to adapt to the new mothering style for a week while the “new mother” got to figure out how the family should spend its $50,000 prize money.

No. 3 and I figured out that they must always look for an opposite mom to spice up the show. “You’re not like either of those mothers,” she said, trying to figure out what my opposite would be like. “The mother wouldn’t be much fun because you are.” How sweet, I thought.

Then she continued that the new mom would sit around all day on the couch doing nothing because her mom is always doing something and complaining that she never gets to sit down. A complainer, huh?

No. 3 should have stopped with her assessment before adding that the new mom would get off her lazy butt three times a day to cook her some meals. Ouch.

“Wait a minute,” I tried feebly to defend myself. “Didn’t I just microwave some popcorn for you? Didn’t I throw stuff in the crockpot and plug it in this morning so you’d have dinner? Isn’t our trash littered with empty boxes that once contained food?”

“Yes, but…”

I cut in, “Didn’t I cook a big spaghetti dinner with your favorite meatball recipe and sausage for your surprise birthday party?” To which I added a generous dose of motherly guilt, “And you didn’t even eat it.”

“Ohmygawd. Ohmygawd. I can’t believe it. I thought that was sauce from a jar. Ohmygawd.” With this she burst into tears and ran from the room.

Now we really feel like morons, each for our own reason, and we still don’t know how the show ended. Some families just aren’t ready for prime time. The reality is, we’re one of them.

Luanne Traud is the Herald-Standard’s editorial page editor. E-mail: ltraud@heraldstandard.com.