Wednesday, 26 November 2008

• I am Thankful for...

  This is a blast from the past.  I am heading to Arkansas for the weekend to spend time with the Outlaw In-Laws.  Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  I will be missing son this year.  He has decided to go it alone in Ithaca, New York... maybe his last semester there so, I guess it's all good.  I am thankful for so many things, I am thankful that son thinks and feels, so I am trying to overlook what I see as a monumental mistake, because after all he is twenty years old, and the good Lord knows I have made my fair share of mistakes.  Here are a few things I am grateful for.
  
  

  My family growing up!
  

  
  

  
  

  Memories from my Childhood:
  

  ~ Staring into the clouds for hours.

  
  

   ~ Imagining every storm that rolled in was a signal of the end of times.

   ~ Playing school on the front porch, I was always the teacher.

   ~ Playing speed and other card games with the neighbors when it was too hot to get out of the shade.

   ~ Walking to Pak-n-Sak for an Icee and a penny piece of gum.      

   ~ Spending a week every summer at my Aunt and Uncle’s camp house on Lake Bistineau.
  

  
  

   ~ Home made ice cream and fish fries.

   ~ Listening to records on the phonograph through the window.

   ~ Sneaking off to our favorite swimming holes, and swimming at night.

  ~  Flying kites in the Spring.

  
  

   ~ Laughing at silly jokes.

   ~ Vacation Bible School with punch and cookies.

   ~ Spinning in circles until we would fall down and then just laying there looking up.

  ~  Playing in the rain, and making mud pies.

  
  

   ~ Not being in a hurry.

   ~ Make believe.

  I have many fond memories of holidays with family.  I think we need to get back to those days when family mattered.  Children today are not allowed much imagination.  Everything is already imagined for them.  Video games, movies, internet relationships, 200 channels of television, MTV, pencil thin girls to fashion themselves after, and steroid bulk guys for the young men, and as a teacher I already see the ramifications of this.  Students don’t want to think, they don’t want to finish a book, and if they do they don’t want to analyze it.  They are so accustomed to having everything provided to them, fed to them, that they think the teacher is being unusually cruel, if he/she doesn't tell them this is what the book is about. They need immediate feed back; it is what they are familiar with.  I am not putting down teenagers, I am sad for them, for the misguided, and lost innocence.  I am the mother of one, and I let it happen to mine, if I am to be completely honest, there were times, in his childhood when the play station or the television were his baby sitters.  I couldn't trust him outside alone, like my parents could, so he didn’t go out much.  I am as wired as any teenager today, well except maybe for the text messaging, but I grew up figuring things out for myself.  Many of our future adults will struggle in life, because life is not like MTV, and every girl shouldn't look like Mary Kate and Ashley.  All teenage boys do not have to look like the Gucci model, or the latest sports figure, and they won't.  The sad thing is, is that most teens are disillusioned and believe they will have lives like those they see on MTV, they strive to be someone they are not, and when they can't they become depressed, and jaded.  Young men and women who play sports are pushed so hard, that the pleasure is often evaporated.  Where do we go from here?  I don’t have the answers, but I know we can not go back, and believe me I have my fair share of regrets with my son.  So take your kids camping, leave the I-Pod, and laptop at home, sit down and play a board game with them ever once in awhile, teach them it is okay to lose, read books to them, teach them to imagine, and dream, show them the clouds, and fireflies, and rainbows…and God.

  Peace, Love and Energy,
  
  Tricia
  

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