If only kids had a switch on the back on their necks so you could shut the things off for a while.
The drawback to this would be my having to miss out on the pleasure of reading about public arrests at the airport for parents coming back from fabulous vacations after leaving their children home to fend for themselves:
"It appears that the food and the environment were set up for them to be alone," San Ramon Police Sergeant Brian Kalinowski said.
The older boy said he was instructed to not answer the front door, so officers had to use a ladder to enter the home through an unlocked sliding glass door on a second-floor balcony.
Joshua [Calero] said he and his brother ate cereal for breakfast and cooked frozen dinners in the microwave for lunch and dinner.
He said his dad and stepmother had left last weekend while they were asleep. They had asked him to watch his younger brother, but did not tell him where they were staying, he said.
"They shouldn't leave us alone," Joshua said, sitting in the living room of his grandmother's apartment.
"I didn't know who I could call in an emergency. Even if I called my father, he's far away, so there wouldn't be much he could do."
Joshua said the couple got each other puppies for Christmas, and went so far as to bring the pug and the poodle-Maltese mix to De La Vega's mother before leaving town.
"I thought they loved them more than us," the boy said
Looks that way, kid.
On the practical side, cereal and microwave meals get a big thumbs-up from parents seeking to sustain nutrition for their home-aloners while they're off on their getaways.
Mr. and Mrs. Calero had some big Schoos to fill, but they were up to the task.