Do the Sneak

When you want to watch the Simpsons, but your folks say 'No,' you do the sneak (ahh), do the sneak.

I have great parents. They are wonderful people who have always been loving, respectful and caring. But when you are a 7-year-old you tend to have a love-hate relationship with your folks because you’re told to love them but deep down, you know they are the ones that keep you from doing the things you want to.

And therefore, you do the sneak.


One of the great things about being a kid is thinking that you’re smarter than the rest of the world. In the mind of a kid, almost everything they do makes complete and total sense at the time. And yes, little kids get a bad rep for asking the same questions over and over again, but for the most part they can figure things out on their own.

For us, one of the things that worked without question was the idea of hiding under a blanket. Now I know J.K.Rowling wants everything to think that she invented the “invisibility cloak” (I really hope this is my last Harry Potter reference on this thing), but it was kids who came up with it. Under a blanket, no one knows you're there. Pull one over yourself, lie really still on the bed (put a pillow on top of your face for good measure) and no one knows you’re there. It’s not to say we weren’t caught (which was often, however there was little to no punishment for it), but to the 7-year-old mind it totally works.

So for a good period of my childhood, my brother and sister (this was a time before my youngest brother was born) would crawl from our room, blankets over us, and do the sneak. Why? Because there were certain shows mom and dad were allowed to watch but we couldn’t. And worse yet, they were cartoons.

At the time there were a few cartoons I was not allowed to watch -- Beavis and Butthead, Ren and Stimpy are the two that stand out. But the show I remember the most trying to sneak was The Simpsons. My mother has always hated the Simpsons, and there are a number of reasons that she has stated, but for the most part its a constant I have come to recognize. Part of me has assumed that it has a great deal to do with the show being adult in nature and a cartoon, and I think as a teacher she was concerned about students taking after Bart Simpson.

Because of these early interactions with the Simpsons, my post-sneak period has become interesting. Now all of the kids watch it, including my youngest brother who never really had to hide out to watch it as we once did because we were no longer able to stop. My mom usually just says the line “I don’t like this show,” and goes to another room when its on, but there have been a few times when she has giggled -- I’ve heard it, it’s happened. And those years of not being allowed to watch it probably helped make it a program I hold with such high esteem today.

In addition, my dad was also a particular fan of Married with Children. I know this because he would laugh hysterically shortly after the song “Love and Marriage” played in the other room. Unlike the Simpsons, I do not really enjoy Married with Children, and those few times I’ve sat down to watch reruns I’m been fairly unimpressed (I just don’t think its aged as well). And I tend to like Ed O’Neil’s Jay Pritchett in Modern Family much more than Al Bundy.

One thing I snuck more than anything was pop (Disclaimer: I call it soda but my stats tell me most of you are reading this from Ohio). In my youth my dad was a huge fan of cola drinks, Pepsi and Coke especially. And one of the duties as a kid was pouring him drinks. We still do this today, except his drink of choice has shifted toward milk with ice.

As a 7-year-old given the task of pouring a fizzing, sugary drink for your parent, it’s hard to take some from the top. Especially the fizz -- no one would notice. And the kids were not allowed to drink dad’s pop (there were few times when we would get soda, and I remember the screaming and kicking about getting a 7-Up when we ate out).

Rules are made to be broken at that age. The sneak was our way of circumventing those rules. I don’t think it was ever malicious in intent, we were having fun. So, 7-year-old me, if you’re reading this from beneath a blanket, I envy you in some way. Today I don’t appreciate what I can do as an adult because I don’t have to sneak things anymore, and maybe that’s one of the saddest realizations I’ve had about growing up since I’ve started this thing.