Listening to my children sing songs from Scripture Scouts as we drove home from Salt Lake, I thought about the conversation I just had with a Talent Agent.
A couple of days ago I was stopped at Walmart by a Talent Scout. It was the day I had driven a friend and her daughter to Primary Children's Hospital for some tests, and managed to skip my daily shower. My children were a wreck. I tried to clean off Briella's forehead from her green drink of spinach, grapes, and bananas for lunch but missed. At least her bangs weren't sticking to her head at Walmart like they were at home. If you looked hard enough, you could see some green smudgins still lingering.
Alex somehow had been dragged on the carpet and had a nice scab on his forehead and Kayla, well, if her naturally wavy hair isn't tended to, she can look homeless as well.
We were not at our best or even our usual selves. But I needed to get some groceries for a couple ice cream cakes I wanted to make for a birthday as well as some ingredients for dinner and I thought I could hurry in to Walmart and hopefully avoid seeing any "important" people.
Gazing at all the chocolate choices in the baking aisle, a lady and her cart come behind us and she excuses herself as she goes around us. She turns around and introduces herself as a Talent Scout and that she had noticed Briella. At first I was like "excuse me, who are you, and where are you from?" She handed me her card and proceeded to tell me that she works for an agency that represents children who do commercials, modeling, acting, etc. She told me that she would like Briella to come in and meet the head agent and talk about getting signed on. Flattered that Briella looked like a model with green spinach stuck to her forehead and her stick straight hair grazing her eyes, I thought why not, and gave her names and my phone number.
The next day I received a call from the agency for an appointment on Thursday at 3:00. They requested a couple of pictures of Briella and said she could dress comfortably. I had some crazy thoughts as I tried to decide if I wanted to dress like a mom, with a model child, with brown suede boots over my cute jeans with my red purse. Or dress as the Mormon mom, that I am. I decided to go with the latter and where my open-toed sandals, jeans, and a cute blouse.
"Does Briella watch lots of TV and commercials?" The agent asked me.
"Yeah . . ." I say. She watches movies. Like the princess ones." I wasn't sure how to answer the question. I should have said been more honest and said: "Actually, not really. There isn't anything appropriate for children on television. And when my husband and I watch television, we watch it prerecorded, and fast forward all commercials. Although when we fold laundry, we watch Bewitched off of Hulu and do have to sometimes watch one commercial every ten minutes or so. I think he may have got the idea that I didn't sit my kids in front of the TV to have them memorize commercials. He said to me "If you'd like Briella to go forward in this industry, you should sit her down and teach her to say some commercials." I couldn't even think of a commercial, let alone rattle one off from memory.
Instead as I drove home through all the traffic, and pollution, while watching the beautiful mountains, I was happy to know that my kids aren't programmed by television. Instead they are programmed by me. And I let them listen to stories from the scriptures while driving. I choose the movies they watch. I teach them about Jesus and the person he is and the people we want to become. They watch me and the things that I do. And I'm happy to say that I don't have any commercials memorized. And that I really don't care for my children to enter that kind of industry. Because I'd have to sit down with them and show them pictures of the laundry soap Tide and let them smell it and have them memorize jingles, instead of teaching them "Jesus Wants Me for a SunBEAM!"