Turn, Turn, Turn

Around our place, basically anything that has buttons or a display -- particularly any kind of digital readout -- is my responsibility. TV, VCR/DVD, clocks, computers, even to some extent the oven, all fall under my purview. After all, I am the Moderately-Well-Paid Information Technology Professional. I do my best to bear up under such a heavy load... although it's probably best that we don't talk about the first day of Daylight Savings Time back in 2000, AKA "Black Sunday".

The irony is that I am not the one in the house who owns a personal digital assistant. My wife, whose traditional brand of organizer has always been the patented "lots of scraps of paper" method, saw another minister using one at a meeting; when she got home, we got in the car and went out to buy one for her.

As enthusiastic about technology as I am in general, I haven't felt the lack of a PDA too intensely. I'm not exactly an Early Adopter by nature -- I even bought a VCR recently. However, I'm coming to the conclusion that I need something to help me keep track of one thing: whose turn it is.

It started simply enough, although I confess I don't recall what the first instance was. One day we went to do something and someone said, "He/she got to do it yesterday", so I said, "OK, today it's your turn." But I have a 7-year-old son who is obsessed with being first, and a 4-year-old daughter who is grimly determined that he won't get anything that she can't also have. In both cases, the wailing about the hideous fate of 'going second' is earsplitting; my son is especially fond of "Ohhhhh, I never get to do that!"

So at present, I am attempting to keep track -- using only the memory chips my Maker originally gave me -- of (at least!) whose turn it is to do the following:

• bring in the newspaper in the morning
• choose a group of 3 videos for potential viewing
• select the afternoon video from the group of 3 (this division of duties was itself devised to try to get around the 'my turn' thing, but succeeded only in creating an extra turn)
• choose his/her afternoon snack first
• open the door first
• get in/out of the van first
• take the first bath
• open our Advent calendar and retrieve the day's chocolate treat
• sit on a particular parent's lap during prayer time
• administer evening prayer time (each evening during prayer time one of the children gets to choose who goes next to offer their "thank you to Jesus")
• be put to bed by a particular parent

I actually thought about keeping track on our "fridge calendar" -- but there's literally not enough room to write it all in, unless I expand it to include the whole side of the fridge. I suppose the alternative is to designate each day as belonging to one kid or the other, but I'm not sure either of them can wait a whole day for their next turn! At least this way each child has something to hold onto each day. Or, you know, I can just ask them... to which the response is almost invariably "Me!"

Since a parent's job seems to involve a striped shirt and a whistle anyway, perhaps we should start each day (each activity?? Noooo!) with a coinflip: "Captains ready? Call it in the air..."

How long do you think it would be before, "Ohhhhh, I never get to be heads!"