My Real Life

I believe I have documented the fact that this family, well, this family minus Real Man, are big fans of Dr. Who.

We started watching the show a few years ago and we quickly binged every episode from it’s 2005 reboot with Christopher Ecclestone.

It’s quirky and humorous and touching and we have just always loved it.

Especially episodes with the Daleks.

Am I right?

We fell in love with Ecclestone’s doctor and were sure we would never enjoy the show the same way when he left and David Tennant showed up, but it turned out that we loved Tennant even more.

Then when Tennant left and Matt Smith arrived as the new doctor, we said there was no way he was going to be able to fill those shoes. And yet…

Matt Smith and Karen Gillian were the absolute best. The best.

When Matt Smith left and Peter Capaldi came in, we truly did not love the show as much as we had with the other doctors, but the storylines still captivated us and we remained true fans of the show, even if we weren’t huge fans of the new doctor, himself.

And then Peter Capaldi left and we had our first female doctor, Jodie Whittaker.

We weren’t sure how we were going to feel about Whittaker’s take on the doctor, but we were willing to give it a try, as we had been proven wrong before.

The week before the premiere, BBCAmerica had a Dr. Who marathon where they showed every episode of the David Tennant and Matt Smith years and we went through and recorded all of our favorites and spent hours reliving those moments.

It was a good week. The three big kids and I joined together in the living room to watch those episodes and remembered little phrases that we used to repeat to each other and small moments in episodes that we have talked about throughout the years.

And then we gathered to watch the premiere of the new season.

This season is a really new season, as the entire writing team changed.

And, this is a new season, might I add, that unveiled the first female doctor…EVER.

That’s a big deal.

People have an image of who the doctor is and what HE should be.

Except now HE is going to be a SHE and that excites me for little girls everywhere.

And then we watched the show.

Eh.

We are now six episodes in and I gotta tell ya…we still aren’t loving it.

I don’t think that there is necessarily an issue with Jodie Whittaker, herself.

She’s quite delightful.

I think it’s the storytelling.

It’s slower than we are used to. There’s not much action. They aren’t really traveling much.

And, if you are a Dr. Who fan, you know that one of the best parts of the show is the banter between the doctor and his/her companions.

It’s quick, it’s funny, it’s engaging.

And from this season of the show…

It’s lacking.

There’s no humor and the storylines are slow and serious and just not…getting it.

I almost didn’t write this post because I’m not into complaining and publicly bashing things and people.

But this isn’t a bash. It’s more of a “c’mon new writers…lighten up” request.

Because, you know, I’ve just got a ton of screenwriters who actually read this blog.

It’s hard when things change. When things you are used to morph into something new.
And it’s early, yet. It’s still possible that the show could hit it’s stride and suck us right back into our Dr. Who obsession.

But right now?

Not so much.

Yesterday, we had to say goodbye to Gramps, our hermit crab.

Gramps’ buddy, Shelly, lost his (or her…we were never really sure) battle with life in the crabitat a few months after we purchased them in August 2017, and Gramps has been going it solo since then.

We don’t have pets.

Instead, we have four kids.

So we’ve never had to flush a goldfish or put a dog to sleep, etc.

Our children have never had a close relative die or even a close family friend, and so they haven’t really ever had to deal with death beyond when their character in a video game dies.

Which, of course, then respawns, so even that isn’t real experience with death and totally messes with a child’s expectations of what happens when a person dies.

So, yesterday, Real Man catches my eye in the kitchen and gestures toward the crabitat where I see Gramps’ shell turned upside down, his dry little legs extended over the edge, unmoving and completely dead.

My first thought was “Oh crap…I forgot to spray down the crabitat with moisture last weekend. I killed him,” because, (and this will come as no surprise to the moms in the group) despite the fact that he’s the kid’s pet, the responsibility for keeping him alive falls on MY shoulders.

But then I remembered that I certainly had taken care of Gramps last weekend, and that a year and a half is a pretty good life for a hermit crab living in a plastic cage in northern New Jersey.

Real Man and I took the shell out of the crabitat and put it on the counter. We touched the legs to make sure they were really not moving, and they weren’t. We talked about what to do and we decided we would flush the body and clean out the shell to either add to the shell collection in the bathroom or in case we ever got more hermit crabs.

Real Man had a paper towel and pulled on the legs and they separated from the shell and from the remainder of the body. The big claw and legs were now in the paper towel and the other big claw and legs were still in the shell. We’d have to dig it out.

But, right then is when Tiny came into the kitchen and asked what we were doing.

So, we told him Gramps had died and he cried and cried.

I took him to the living room where we sat on the couch and reminisced about the good times we had with Gramps.

“Remember when we made Gramps and obstacle course out of blocks?”

“Remember when Shelly used to try to climb out of the crabitat by standing on Gramps’ shell?”

“Remember when we used to make funny voices for Gramps and Shelly and make up fake conversations for them?”

(All of which happened about a year ago, because it’s a hermit crab, which is not a fun pet, and which the kids really never paid attention to after a few months)

I told Tiny that Gramps was probably happy to be reunited with Shelly in hermit crab heaven which he quickly refuted with “Shelly isn’t in heaven…she’s in the sewer…you flushed her!” which was a point I found myself unable to argue.

As I comforted Tiny, Real Man poked his head around the corner and gestured for me to come back in the kitchen with big eyes.

I left Tiny in the capable hands of his brother who was reminding him of other fun times with Gramps (“Remember when Mom was cleaning Gramps crabitat and put him on the counter and forgot about him and we found him in the laundry room the next day?”) and went to the kitchen.

“So,” Real Man began, “I don’t think he’s dead.”

“Excuse me?” I answered. “You just pulled half of his body out of the shell!”

“Yeah…but…” and he held up his phone and showed me an article he had Googled about how sometimes hermit crabs molt their old legs off and grow new legs underneath.

And he picked up the shell and showed me what we had thought were other legs but weren’t, in fact, fresh, new, pink legs.

Which were moving.

Are. You. Kidding. Me?

I immediately cleaned out the crabitat and refilled the water and the food and we set Gramps right in the water dish and he started to rock and roll.

And I was so excited, there were tears of joy in my eyes.

They definitely were not tears of I had already imagined the counter where the crabitat sat being clear, for once, and the freedom of not having to remember to feed and water that thing every weekend.

Definitely not those kind of tears.

And we went in the living room and said “So, guess what, Tiny? Gramps isn’t dead after all!” and we explained the whole thing and so now Tiny thinks life is like a video game where, if your legs get cut off, they’ll grow back and if you die, you might not really be dead…the doctor might have just made a mistake and so death isn’t really a permanent thing, despite our very thorough explanations that we just got it wrong the first time.

So, yeah.

Thanks, Gramps.