2-D DaddyI'm sure that for someone out there this story won't be disturbing -- after all, some people are part of the program -- but the Flat Daddy/ Flat Mommy program feels wrong.
In short, the Army National Guard has instituted a program where they provide roughly life-sized photos of the head and upper body of deployed servicemen and women which their families can affix to foam core board and keep around as placeholders. This way they can be home and present at all family activities. Why, ideally it'll feel as if he never left...This shot strikes me as unbelievably sad and macabre all in the same stroke. One person likened it to having a sock puppet as a surrogate parent for some endangered species, though at least there's more of a guiding and benevolent intelligence behind the sock. Having a picture of a family member who's away is one thing, but taking a life-sized cut-out of the head and torso of a loved one out on appointments, setting him up at the dinner table... this is another one of those moments where something from The Simpsons steps out into reality.
I suppose if dad returns with his legs blown off this'll have prepared the kids for his new stature. (Yes, that was amazingly callous of me, but the flat daddy concept is so disturbing me that unless one believes in voodoo I'd call us even.)
Not having kept up on such stats as are actually released, I wonder how many of those returning will be bringing some sort of post-traumatic shock back with them, leaving their families to wonder why they couldn't be more pleasant, like their flat counterpart was.
I suppose we could extend this concept to cover all of us who are being consumed by careers we didn't want, too. No more angst about missing a school play, a soccer game... why, one of these could even be set up on the couch so come Christmas morning a guy doesn't even have to get up and watch the kids unwrap the presents! Okay, that's probably going too far. Still, it's almost too easy to imagine a school auditorium where most of the seats are filled with flat parents. But, I digress.
Can't we just send the cut-outs to Iraq instead? A sham war declared by a sham government demands sham soldiers, says I.
Oh, well... let's just go for the next step.
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Eventually, we should be able to build robot duplicates of any person we want to spend more time with than circumstances allow. And then, of course, you'll be able to reprogram them to be more pleasant company. And then, of course, you'll like the robo-dupe more than you like the real person...
Eventually, we'll all be sitting outside our own living rooms watching the perfectly programmed robodupes interact with each other inside. Make sure you grab a sweater on the way out the door. It's cold out there.
Wonder how those guys in Iraq feel when they get a letter from home and they are in the enclosed photos. Gotta be pretty freaky to them!!
To share a somewhat topical story, our IT guy (when we had one) did a life size photo of one of our field superintendents who was out on medical leave, and adhered it to foam board (which is like air around my office...it's everywhere). It was done as a surprise for when he got back...and found himself sitting behind his desk in the construction trailer. Lame, yeah. The better part is that he was so hated, that one of the subcontractors on the job stole the Flat Superintendent and hung him in effigy from the roof of the building they were constructing. Talk about pissed! Whew! The superintendent had to climb up there and de-hang himself.