I liked being in school not just because of the socializing
or the availability of different kinds of drugs, but because there was a right
and wrong. You knew pretty quickly that the answer to 7 X 4 – 13 wasn’t 7 ¼. Napoleon
wasn’t a kind of three flavoured ice cream at all, but an 18th century
Frenchman that shot the nose off of the Sphinx with a canon. You certainly knew
just where you stood, unlike life after school.
It is when you get out in the real world that things start
to come unravelled. Of course there are firm answers, but for a lot of life you
just seem to learn as you go. Most men don’t know a thing about women that is
in any way useful and continually prove that fact. Women know that men make
good a good project and they set out to change the guy to become their idea of
the perfect man. Relationships seem to grow like a plant in the garden.
Sometimes they wither and die, but often if you are lucky they will grow and
get stronger in spite of you. There are probably thousands of books on the
subject, but you can’t learn emotions from books. You can learn to fake
emotions from books but that seldom works.
When you raise kids, you try to do the right thing and
sometimes you get lucky. I don’t think any parent tries to be a bad dad. We
sometimes just don’t know where to start, it is so overwhelming. The only model
we have is the one we grew up in. Our parents are the benchmark of child rearing
and we try to emulate them. Well, except for the things they got wrong when
they raised us. The other partner brings his or her ideas about being a parent
into the marriage and if they are lucky, the two methods work well together and
you raise kids you can be proud of.
It is kind of interesting to see the things that didn’t
really work when you were raising your kids. You can tell by what your kids do
or don’t do when they raise your grand kids. For the most part, I think Louise
and I did a pretty good job. Okay, Louise did a pretty good job and I backed
her up. Hurricane and Tornado are doing pretty well and Arwen has yet to choke
either one of them. I guess you know how well you did as a parent by watching how
good your kids are, and mine are wonderful people and good parents.
Tomorrow I get to go with Hurricane and his mom to pick up a
beaver uniform at the Scout shop. It has been quite a while since I was down
there and it is sure to bring back many happy memories. I am so excited that I
might not be able to sleep tonight.
DYD, DYB, DYB…DOB, DOB, DOB.
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