Final Thoughts on Trading Spouses
The rest of the family went to a bluegrass festival. I'm suffering from festival burnout so stayed home to tie up loose ends and finally watch the part two of the show. After seeing how the editors meddled with our reality on the first part, I skipped seeing the second part. I wanted to retain a memory of the actual experience for awhile. It's faded now... so I figured it was time to see what all the fuss on part II was about.

Anyway a few things caught my interested. The emotional interaction I had with Vickie was so out of context, cut, switched, and stitched that I suppose everyone who saw it thought..."what was that all about?" Having 'set it up', the editors then used Vickie's prescient and insightful understanding of our family's 'secret' over and over to 'educate' the viewer. What surprises me is how easily that worked.

But most telling are the people who got so emotionally worked up over what they 'understood' the situation to be. Even when I view the show as though it was reality (me clinging to my sons), I'm feel... so what! Poor pappa, or what ever. The intense emotions of some viewers at what they think they saw is an excellent example of how our perceptions and ensuing emotions mirror our own insecurity - our inner most needs and fears. The more fear, the more intense the emotion. The more intense the emotion, the more driven we are to need to do something - if only to post hate mail on the internet.

Well, that is what make the world go round - in circles, I'm afraid. My final word on the show... what a wonderful experience to drop on us out of the blue. Life is an adventure. Well, I've run out of Emoticons so goodnight all...