What’s Your Prerogative?

When I was young, my father managed a warehouse for a major grocery chain. He had all kinds of employees and few were shy about giving their opinions. Finally Daddy would say they were going to do things his way, not because he was the boss, but because it was his prerogative. He found out, by accident, that the word sounded official enough, he received better compliance.

Even as a child, I found it an interesting concept that one person’s choice could be better than another’s. I still had few choices, as children do, but the idea stayed with me.

And then, I was a mother. A mother’s prerogative is usually between “go to your room,” or “stay where I can I see you,” so the idea of choices did not appear possible for a long, long time. Mothers do many things because they are part of the group. My group wanted to see Star Wars. Then, they wanted to watch Star Trek. Along came Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Star Wars additions, Stargate SGI, Stargate Atlantis, Battlestar Galactica, V, Tron, and other planets and space ships and critters and droids and one wondered that they weren’t all running into each other out there in space. I learned to sew during television shows. I learned to write letters during television shows. I would look up to see some purple fellow with one eye talking to some starchy woman with stars on her shoulders and I’d think, “Deep Space? V? No, that was the woman with the bad wig who ate a mouse…” And I would try to orient to what creatures were on what shows and who transported and who went through the watery looking hole, etc. Worf was not a Wookiee, according to the children, though I was never quite sure why not. Believe me, to the non-fan, nothing is more interchangeable than stern looking Captains and their plastic plastered spacemen.

My husband was the first to perceive that I was not on board with Sci-Fi. He bought me my own little television. He and the kids would go downstairs to watch Q face Mr. Data, and I would go upstairs to watch anything else. But there were still movies to see and sometimes, I had to be in the family room with my three children and their dad watching Seven of Nine.

Then it happened.

I had enough Sci-Fi. Not enough for one night, or one month, or one year, but enough. And I dusted off the old prerogative that my father had used so many years before, and said that I was done. Mr. Data had an off switch and so did I. Sci-Fi had by then proliferated to being available every minute on several channels and with box office originals, prequels, sequels, and knock-offs, you could also sit in the theater and soak in how space is not and never will be. Sci-Fi is sometimes darker (Supernatural), sometimes lighter (animations) and had you stretched the film it was all recorded on to one spliced-together length, you could have gone to Pluto and back—probably more than once.

It wasn’t like the family wasn’t willing to let me go. I had developed annoying habits with the genre by then, like asking questions. “Why are those people using candles if they travel on space ships?” “Why does every planet have oxygen?” “Why are Space Troopers such bad shots?” “Does that thing on Teal’c’s head eventually grow until he’s a Klingon?” “Why do so many planets embrace Earth’s medieval period?” “Why isn’t there a character with a parasite inside him so he’s really two characters?” “Why do all of the characters walk on feet? They could float, or even fly!”

I did see the last two Star Wars movies. I sat and rewrote parts of them in my head as they played out on the screen. Star Wars loves dogfights and they go on and on and on, so you can daydream varying ways of doing things that would have been more interesting than sand, more sand, even more sand, and endless shooting. Space has a lot of sand and shooting. And even things that are not sand are sand colored. If you cannot be sand colored, then, you can be black. It is the only other acceptable hue.

I do not know why and my questions bring a group eyeroll that say she’s-doing-it-again, so you will have to solve that one yourself.

Perhaps you need a prerogative. They used to belong to kings and queens, but we are rugged Americans and we can surely pull off a few for each citizen. So far, I have had only two. The other one is I do not hunt for other people’s keys. If you do not know where you left it, it’s certain that I don’t know where you left it. If you lose your phone, I will call it. If you lose your shoes, I will search for them. But tack those keys to your hide or keep up with them yourself because I have a prerogative and I know how to use it.