Star Trek, Harry Potter, and Living in Space and Fantasy will help us Raise Our Children – Dr. Plastic Picker
 

Star Trek, Harry Potter, and Living in Space and Fantasy will help us Raise Our Children

| Posted in Our Tween/Teen, Star Trek/ Philosophical Tangents

Our daughter made butterbeer and we reused 2 plastic mugs we bought from Universal Studios a long time ago.

May 24, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I wrote what I think was my all time favorite blogpost yesterday about Star Trek https://drplasticpicker.com/the-star-trek-enterprise-romance-of-tpol-and-trip-im-going-to-give-them-the-ending-they-deserve/. I have reread that blogpost about 10 times and read it outloud to both my children and husband. I am now rewatching Star Trek Enterprise with T’Pol and Trip’s alternate ending in my heart. The magic of blogging is that I can do whatever I want, so I made it the Sticky Blog and tacked it on top. Who knows how many people will read it or if the Star Trek fansite I contacted yesterday will accept it as a guest blog piece? But that’s the beauty of blogging and financial freedom, I write mostly for myself. And yesterday I wrote about Star Trek. Isn’t it interesting that I love that silly piece more than the heart-wrenching ones that I needed to write about COVID-19? If you missed them these two were pretty good, one on the importance of social distancing https://drplasticpicker.com/covid-19-social-distancing-is-like-bedrest-kevinmd-version/ and another on physician sacrifice during the COVID-19 era https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/04/an-anatomy-lab-partner-lost-what-would-chris-have-thought-about-covid-19.html. But that is human nature. We would rather retreat into our fantasty worlds than deal with reality.

Last night our daughter wanted to have a special evening. She is in that inbetween age of tweendom https://drplasticpicker.com/dr-plastic-pickers-thoughts-the-age-of-in-betweenness/. She is a more gregarious person that I ever was, eventhough she is quieter in person. I am very loud-mouthed in person, but truly an introvert. I would rather blog and be home and not see anyone, which is the greatest of ironies because I see patients and parents all day. I actually enjoy work and patient-care and productive meetings, but I think I enjoy those actions because I know I am being paid to do them and like the feeling of competence and progression. If I am not getting paid or accomplishing something that is moving our organization forward, I’d rather be by myself or with my family. Weird I know. I hate socializing for work, and only enjoy our department parties if I get to man the check-in desk which is an odd place for a physician middle-manager.

But our daughter is different, and Dr. Plastic Picker your local litter-picking pediatrician knows how to parent. A good parent shifts with the personality of your particular child. Parenting is weaving in and out. Your child tries to feint right, you move left. You have to outsmart them by being flexible in your parenting style. So our daughter wanted to be social and have the entire family spend the evening together, and I tamped down my own personal desires and was smart and put down my iPhone with Star Trek and spent time with her.

We had a wonderful evening and it was a Harry Potter themed evening. We were going to play the Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit game, but it is much too challenging for Mr. Plastic Picker and I. Instead we played Scrabble, and decided that any Harry Potter themed words (if 2 out of the other 3 players agreed) would get an additional double word score. Only MAGE made it. It was funny everyone trying to justify why certain words would get extra credit. Did SWAN count, since it was the patronus of a character? What about BOAR, since it’s a synonym for HOGS and the book is set on HOGSWART? I had miscalculated one score and had thought one tile was a TRIPLE LETTER SCORE but it was actual a DOUBLE LETTER SCORE. Our son, who was the word player, mentioned it afterwards thinking that his score was set. But we ammended the score totals which my son mentioned just off-hand he should have kept quiet about. We had a quick discussion about honesty and I did those absolute mommy pronouncements I make occassionally, “Do not ever lie, even my ommission. I don’t lie.” I live in a world of absolutes and my son gets the message. My parents would teach us that way, and it worked. I think our son’s moral health will be just fine.

We wore our Harry Potter themed clothes that we had already. Two Harry Potter gowns we got at Goodwill in October, one for $7.99 and one for $20. They are high quality and I looked online and they retail for $40 and the other one for $100. We reused two of our Butter Beer cups we got at Universal Studios years ago, and our daughter made homemade Butter Beer. It was actually delicious and much better than the one we had at Universal Studios. We have been to the one in Florida and the one in California. The price of frozen Butter Beer is now $6.99, and with a souvenir cup is $12.99!

I originally started writing this blogpost and it was titled “Almost to Bag #200: Goals versus Dreams versus Delusions.” I was initially intending to flesh out what my goals for life and the blog. I was going to talk about my dreams for the kids. Our son’s english teacher had sent an unsolicited note to us commending our son on his work and his writing, something I don’t think my 9th grade English teacher would have ever sent. I had a sense of contentment that he’s made it through ninth grade with a good set of principles, a true love of learning, and the external metrics like grades and test scores correlate with what I am seeing at home https://drplasticpicker.com/from-language-delay-to-ap-computer-science-its-a-big-day-for-our-family/. In brief, he is a better student than I was. He has enough of my former edge and competitiveness, that he will do fine in the real world. He is on his journey and it is now his life to live. I believe the same for our daughter. I now know in my heart that they are more evolved humanoids than both Mr. Plastic Picker and I. My in-laws taught me that. If you believe that in your heart and know that as a parent your role is to support and nurture them and that your children will be more accomplished and better people than you are, than you know they and you are on the right path.

I have renamed this post “Star Trek, Harry Potter, and Living in Space and Fantasy will help us Raise Our Children.” Because it is true. Through these imaginative worlds we enjoy, Star Trek for me, Harry Potter for our children, and the many other worlds we enjoy – we teach them life lessons and these multiple universes and imaginative worlds are weaving in and out of our lives. Goals versus Dreams versus Delusions: in the end maybe we cannot and should not differentiate. Those who believe in these imaginative worlds are not delusional, they are dreaming. And dreaming is beautiful.

This is Dr. Plastic Picker and I also dream of a plastic-free ocean. I’m at Bag #193 of plastic litter that I have collected myself. Thank you for following along as I try to figure out life. If you are a patient or a parent of one of my patients, we are all trying to figure it out together. Try to book to see me on Wednesdays! I’ve been wearing the Harry Potter Ravenclaw Robes on Wednesday mornings! LOL.

Scrabble board we played last night, was lopsided. I took the picture upside down accidently. But was it really an accident? Or was it a reminder that we should continue to try to look at the world from different perches.

Sometimes with escapism, a good movie will do the trick. It’s less investment than a new book series. Here is what we’ve been watching! https://drplasticpicker.com/covid-19-quarantine-list-of-tween-and-teen-movies-suggestions-from-the-dr-plastic-picker-family/

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