No Play-doh, No

Christmas break, along with one of the most troublesome snow storms in recent memory, allowed me to spend an enormous amount of time these last few weeks in my home, with my family.  Words cannot describe this experience.  I learned many valuable lessons during this time, but the real gem of wisdom garnered is this:  Play-Doh is not real.  

Play-Doh, ladies and gentlemen, is selling a dream.   What you see on the box is not what you will see on your kitchen table an hour after opening that box.  What you will see on your kitchen table is deformed blobs in various shades of regret.  You will see frustrated children and their broken, bended, droopy aspirations.  You will see multicolored “animals” that no shelter, zoo, or even ark would ever take in.  You will watch a horse become a snowman, and then you will watch that snowman melt. 

Play-Doh began its charade in our home about a year ago, when our daughter received a Play-Doh Disney princess castle.  With this castle we were able to do a number of things.  For starters, we could squeeze out for Rapunzel some really unappealing gold-speckled hair.  We could mold for Cinderella, Belle or Sleeping Beauty unflattering, multi-colored gowns.  Once these gowns were in place, we could then mold for the princesses their very own prince.  These princes were faceless, charmless fellows, but at least they kept quiet.

  The sham continued this Christmas when our daughter received a Play-Doh ice cream maker while our son received a Play-Doh garbage truck.  The ice cream maker is supposed to make Play-Doh creations that look like ice cream.  It does not.  The garbage truck has a much simpler task.  It is supposed to gobble up Play-Doh trash and refurbish it into other Play-Doh trash.  It doesn’t really do that, either, but at least when you’re playing with pretend trash your expectations are much lower.

Not all is lost, however.  As is the custom in our society, I have chosen to turn our Play-Doh rollouts into “teachable moments.”  Play-Doh, you see, is just like any political ideology ever devised.  As mentioned, what you see is not what you will get.  Take the Play-Doh ice cream maker, for example.  (Seriously, take it.  I will leave it on my front porch.)  The box portrays two very happy children using the product to create various flavors of fake ice cream.  This fake ice cream is remarkably appealing and even comes with sprinkles.  According to the picture on the box, you can swirl the fake ice cream and place it either a pretend ice cream cone or a pretend ice cream bowl.  Regardless, if you buy this product, you will apparently be able to make Play-Doh that looks so much like real ice cream that you might as well cancel dinner because someone in the room is going to eat some delicious modeling clay.

The reality of this product, though, is that you are in no jeopardy of missing any meals.  Besides being ridiculously difficult to even crank out, the “ice cream” does not resemble ice cream any more than Rapunzel’s hair looks like hair.  As far as the sprinkle makers goes, I could make more realistic looking sprinkles by just waiting a few hours after feeding some of it to a rat terrier.

The scene portrayed on the box was clearly designed in a controlled, ideal environment.  No one under the age of thirty-three was allowed in the room until all the swirly, sprinkly “ice cream” had been made and was ready to “eat.”  A few pictures were taken, the children were given real ice cream and a stern warning not to talk, and that was that.

This is how ideologies are designed.  Ideologies and their policies are created behind closed doors, away from reality, in an intellectual vacuum.  Whether we are talking about liberalism or conservatism, or even socialism or libertarianism, they all look good on the box.  They all work on paper.  Once you open the box, though, once the children are allowed in the room, things get very messy very fast.  Once the ideal, which will always work in theory, is combined with a reality full of human nature, finite resources, and annoying facts, it is too late.    The product has been purchased, the ideal has been sold.

We need to remember this as we once again find ourselves in an election year.  Soon we will have the opportunity to make crucial decisions at the local, state and federal level.  So, in other words, if someone comes along and tells you their product is going to solve all of our problems, be wary.  Just because it comes with sprinkles doesn’t mean you should eat it.