In Which I Watch the Kardashians

Last updated on: October 13, 2015 at 8:41 am by Anne Kennedy

In Which I Watch the Kardashians 2015-10-13T08:41:48-04:00 Anne Kennedy

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I have a bad cold, thanks to my offspring, and am suffering the indignity of a plugged ear. What? What’s that you say? You’re sorry for me? Oh, you don’t care? It doesn’t matter, I Can’t Hear You! I have to turn all the way around and put my good ear up against whoever is shouting at me, in order to try to understand what sort of greeting theirs might be.

Anyway, in all the hoopla of coming home and trying to put our lives into a semblance of order, I completely forgot about the ten minutes of television I was able to indulge in last week. We have a big fat television here at home, but it’s really a glorified Minecraft box. To pay for other more interesting stuff, like, well, not food, but fencing or something, we returned the cable box back to its true owners, much to their sorrow and chagrin. They didn’t want it back, see, and persisted in woe on the phone for nearly an hour, because they’re so worried about our happiness. What will we do, we could hear the agony of concern in the throbbing voice, we’ll be so unhappy.

Happiness is So Important. I do feel this as I try to battle out against God and everyone around me. I have a very clear picture of what constitutes true happiness. For me, lovely Christian that I am, it encompasses stuff like A Clean House, Kind Obedient Children Who Can Spell, All the People I Love Not Dying, and, of course, Luncheon. My desires are simple, and yet, if you examine my list, completely unattainable. Therefore, I cannot be really happy. I might as well probably give up.

The television company so much wants me to be happy that they’ve filled themselves up with stuff I can’t imagine really watching. This was remembered by me as we sat in our hotel room, flipping through the channels. Mind you, we only did it one time. I realized how much of an adult I have become because we lived in that room for three days, in virtual silence, only once turning that huge thing on and then turning it off again ten minutes later. Had children been there, they would not have been able to understand the insanity of sitting, quiet, for minutes and seconds on end, reading a book or something.

Anyway, in those ten minutes, I did manage to find the Kardashians. Long ago, when the cable box sojourned in our house, that was my tiny guilty pleasure. It’s the most mesmerizing thing, watching those incredible women, their incredible shapes and incredible eyes and incredible sultry voices, lounging around and eating salads. So little action, so much concentrated attention on the relationships of the various members of this sprawling family. On the one hand, the wealth and the makeup, on the other hand, the ordinary frustrations of other people not doing what you think they should do. I used to watch it with the volume real low, when no kids were around, to make myself feel more holy. I would toddle up to bed after watching Kim try to reconcile one recalcitrant sibling to another and whisper to myself, ‘See, God, I am not like other men. I go to church and give to the poor and bla bla bla.” And God, as it were, in the most biblical response possible, would scoff. “Yeah, sure, if you could live like that you totally would.” (I swear, that’s in the bible somewhere, go look it up.)

I was charmed to find, when we discovered they were still there, that Kim Kardashian looked exactly the same and was filling out her purpose as mediator amongst warring parties. Of course, much has changed in a year. One member professes not to have become a Christian or anything shocking like that, but rather A Woman. Yes indeed, there sat Kim talking to a man, clearly a man in height and bone structure and voice, yea even in manner, but dressed as a woman. Don’t worry, I don’t live under a rock, I know the drama and the Vanity Fair. Not only to do I have to go to the grocery store to buy food, the parish potato harvest having totally disappointed me again this year (that’s a joke, the church doesn’t grow any longer grow potatoes) but I also occasionally surf around on The Internet.

So, wow, Bruce Jenner, I mean Kaitlyn. There he, or rather she, was, and everyone around her, or perhaps him. I expected to see a shiny screen full of shiny happy people. There should be no happier person and people anywhere on earth. This person has been given the heart’s desire. If happiness means getting what you want, this person should be happy, as well as all the people in his, or maybe her, life and sphere of influence.

But that was not reflected on the screen. Every face and expression of everyone in each shot bore the full expression of pain, unhappiness even. It was a shocking visual. Everyone looked unhappy. Each brow was clouded and troubled. And the face of Bruce/Kaitlyn?Heavy with the lines that come from suffering. Srsly, I haven’t seen anyone look that unhappy in ages, except maybe a couple of exhausted poor struggling across the church parking lot. It was so raw that ten minutes seemed a life time and we turned it off.

The only words I remember from those ten minutes were of Kim to the lip-sticked and broken Bruce. “This is your time”, she said. And I thought, what a great and terrible tragedy. To be given everything, to be given Your Time, what a terrible tragedy. In biblical terms, getting everything you think you want is a sign of judgement. A person or people who are given everything they believe themselves to desire, who are let go to utterly and completely fulfill themselves, are in a terribly precarious place. I lay back in the shrouding darkness of night and found myself praying for all the Kardashians, not something I ever expected to do. Didn’t even know what to pray, other than, O God, save them, trouble them, afflict them with your grace. And for myself, I turn again to gratefulness for the troublesome, meddling hand of God, whose interposing, cumbering, preventing mercy does not let all of humanity have what it wants, but comes to bring a better and more beautiful happiness.

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