This summer, I came up with the crazy idea that each person in the family could command one week by coming up with eight “rules” for the rest of the family. It came to be known as “So and so’s perfect world.” Topping my list of rules during Nancy’s Perfect World was the simple statement: No TV or computer use (except as necessitated by paying work). You’d think I’d announced that we’d be doing hard labor 14 hours a day. Oh, the moaning. Seven straight days of moaning, and not just from the children. (I kept my own agony to myself, as I didn’t want another voice–even my own–in the chorus.) Lessons learned?

1. Children take things literally. Andy immediately found a loophole, realizing I had left “Game Boy” out of the phrasing. That became his refuge.

2. All or nothing isn’t necessarily the best path for our family. It was hard on me, too, and my future worlds will probably have a modified version of this edict.

 3. Time slows down in a world without electronics. I found myself ancy when I had free time and had to work through that before I was ready to engage in something like low-key like reading.

 Alas, the summer of perfect worlds taught us what I guess we already knew: Be careful what you wish for.