"Sorry. Maybe Next Time."

I just found the game piece inside my Pepperidge Farm ® Brand Goldfish ® Baked Snack Crackers! To be honest, I wasn’t patient--I rummaged around the bag with my hand. It is for the “Rock the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards ‘06” promotion. (No purchase necessary.) 1 Grand Prize includes round-trip airfare and tickets for four to the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards (“Or you could win 1 of 5,000 Kids’ Choice CD’s”)

My sweetie was just talking about the Kids’ Choice Awards. There are pictures of Jack Black getting slimed all over the celebrity gossip magazines.

“Why do they need their own awards show?” he said.

I argued with him that kids love that sort of stuff. At least I did. When I was a kid, I was really into grown-up stuff. I especially loved having kid versions of grown-up stuff.

“I wanted to be old, too,” he said. “So I watched the adult versions and dreamt of having a moustache.”

I understand his point, though. And I agree. Kids are being treated less and less like kids these days. They are being kept on structured schedules: Ballet lesson at 3:30pm, Bugle Horn at 5:00, and French tutoring at 7:00pm. That leaves little room for good-old-fashioned play. And kids have easy access to all kinds of adult media through the internet. There is probably a 7 year old reading this now, tsking at my improper grammar.

In my day, The Kids Choice awards were novel. Now it’s expected. But in all the years between my childhood and now, when all of these changes have occurred, one thing hasn’t changed: The excitement of finding that tiny cardboard game piece, wrapped in a little plastic sleeve to protect it from snack grease.

I just can’t wait to open it.