Jack is a little television addict. This doesn’t concern me very much though. If there isn’t a TV around Jack will happily find something else to do and his imagination doesn’t seems to be suffering. I was, and still, am unable to ignore a television if it’s on. When I was a kid I was into the Ninja Turtles and spent countless hours fighting my brother Jeff and wearing masks. I had all the toys and video games. I even went to the trouble of learning how to correctly use all of the turtles’ choice weapons in my karate class. Before that it was transformers, so I can hardly be concerned without being hypocritical.
Jack is into Ben 10. This show has only been around for a few years, but in the last 9 months or so has really started to take over. To sum up the show, Ben is a 10 year old boy who discovers a watch in a forest that turns him into 10 different aliens. Ben is an egotistical little show off, his cousin Gwen is a bossy, brainy little girl of the same age. With their grandpa they basically drive around all summer fighting the aliens that, more often that not, have come to earth looking for the watch. There’s another series (Alien Force) where they’re all older as well, it’s a little it more regimented but just as good. Of all the kid shows about now a days I’m happy to report that Ben 10 is among the best. The stories are intriguing the characters are dynamic and real. Helen and I have no trouble sitting and watching it with Jack over and over again, at least not yet.
Jack’s obsession with the show couldn’t have come at a worse time. Helen and had just purchased the last of his Christmas and birthday presents when Jack discovered the show and had not purchased anything Ben 10 related. I don’t think this will be much of a problem really because Jack doesn’t seem to have much trouble turning his toys and household objects into items from the show. We’ve since bought him a couple of DVD’s and have recorded hours and hours on our Sky+ box. Last week Helen even bought him Ben 10 shoes which Jack adores.
Jack now watches as least 2 episodes every day. He bounces around the room turning his toys into aliens and then fighting them in creative and often very loud ways. He runs around the house shouting lines from the show, things like ‘Time to get serious.’, ‘I need Stinkfly.’ 'Ready for action.' and ‘Why can’t I be Fourarms?’. While I was off to band practice one night I got a text from Helen saying that Jack was upstairs in his room shouting for Humongousaur be brought to save them. Apparently the battle was getting a little out of control and Jack needed the biggest of Ben’s aliens to help out. When Helen asked what she needed to do Jack said he needed Dylan, the biggest of Jack’s teddies, to come be Humongousaur. Helen took Dylan up to his room and the battle raged on. We assume that the good guys won.
It seems that the Ben 10 stuff now feeds into other programmes he watches. Today we were watching Dora the Explorer. Jack was getting really into it, answering their questions and running to the screen to help them point at various objects and locations. When the notorious fox Swiper appeared, instead of chanting the customary, Swiper no swiping, with Dora and Boots he produced a rather large firearm made out of the mast of his pirate ship and yelled OPEN FIRE!
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