Friday, October 31, 2014
Gobblin'
When I was a kid, Halloween was very special.
And when I had little kids it was even better!
Now, it is waiting vainly at the door. Living in a condo in a retirement community is not high traffic trick or treat territory.
But I am ready just in case. And if no one shows up, then I am sure we can find a good use for the miniature Milky Way, Snickers, and Twixt bars.
When I was that age, I went out as long as it was decent. Usually with David Bixler from next door who was younger than me. A tepid excuse. There were no other kids on our drive.
Our range was modest. Our street, a parallel street and some houses on the main road.
It was expected that we have costumes of some sort. A mask at least.
Finally, it just got embarrassing so I quit.
With my own kids, I went along and was the Dad standing down the street giving half a wave and not wanting to get in the way. It was still a lot of fun.
Candy bar voyeurism.
It is a great day. No church stuff is involved. No allegiance to a patriotic theme. Just fun with a touch of gluttony.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
I KNEW IT!!
Yes, godammit, yes.
Sponges on the ground. Low plastic jungle "gyms". All the soft looking, risk free, environmentally controlled, wildly colored boring playgrounds now are no challenge, not interesting and basically they scare kids. Jeez. It isn't safe to play.
This article mentions the importance of heights and getting scared.
Instantly, I remembered my climbing tree up on the hill near our house. Not even a built recreational device.
It was hard to get into that tree and I had to be a bit taller and stronger before I could lift myself into it.
Once I could, there was no limit to the heights I would go to see over the other trees below and out into our larger town.
But the thrill was the climb, the shaky limbs, the fear of falling. All of these things, sometimes an inch at a time, conquered.
And not an adult in sight. Nowhere. The tree was on a rock "fence" line and so the fall, if any, was perilous indeed.
To their credit, my parents did not tell me to stay out of it. Actually, they may not have even known that I was in it.
I was mostly a latchkey kid, on my own as both parents worked.
I went and did what I wanted.
In those days, the neighbors had eyes and that helped kids stay safe (although they took Mr. Vernoy, two doors down, away for molesting some other boys in the neighborhood). But still.
I am so against all this over-protective bullshit. Parents who come with their kid to meet me when I interview for MIT. Jesus.
When it was time, I flew to Boston and stayed overnight in a hotel, went and visited MIT and flew home again all by myself. I was 16. Imagine. Part of why I could do that is that I climbed that tree by myself.
Do kids even think of climbing trees any more?
The world is going to hell in a handbasket.
Monday, February 14, 2011
WILL YOU BE MY VALENTINE?
I never quite knew what this meant. Always a little confused about gender I wondered if it was OK to send to other boys.
Well, yes, up to the age of puberty, then, fuck all, no! I got that one soon enough. You would be seen as a faggot if you did that. Well, not if you were a girl. But I wasn't.
In grade school we had Valentines Day boxes. You did your cards and addressed them and put them in the box. One question was how cheap would your cards be. They sold cards in books that you could punch out. Cheap. Some of these books were pulp paper not good stock. Cheaper were templates to make cards. My mother had some cards from when she was a kid. I liked looking at those. Ours weren't much different.
People would keep an eye out for who was putting cards in and how many they had. I know that some kids didn't put any in. Couldn't afford it. Word would get around about this.
Then on the day, they would dump all the cards out of the box and some special teacher pet kids would deliver them. Probably I was one of them.
This is an example of how we institutionalize cruelty for kids.
First of all everyone competed to be a person who got more cards than anyone else. This is a bit hard to achieve as there are only so many kids in the class so many would max out. But there was always some kid who would get more. Where from? Another class? Stuffing the box? Who knew.
The sad part was the kids who got less. The kids who almost got none.
Another cruelty was the comic or insult card. Some kids would get these. Laughter.
I don't know if they do this anymore but I hope that they figure out a way to keep this shit from happening in public. Or something. Maybe the teacher could predict who would not get many and stuff the box. I don't know.
Yes. I hear someone out there saying "don't be so soft". This is prep for life.
Well, fucking exactly! Little kids being indoctrinated into the idea that love involves numbers, quantity and no slams with comic cards.
I got over it I think. But I know that I didn't like it then and I don't like it now.
The holiday? Nice as a passing thing. Fun to do if it is kept simple.
We do some here at home. I got some cards. I sent some cards. Enough already. Let's move on to something important like Presidents Day.
Labels: gay identity, holidays, kidtime
Saturday, January 31, 2009
GARAGE SALE
Yesterday our friend and current fix-it man, Larry, came to fix the sliding doors in the garage closet.
I am still not quite sure what the issue was. This kind of thing is John's department. Runners for the doors, warps, I don't know. They wouldn't slide open or closed.
These are huge shelves, floor to ceiling, a couple of feet deep.
You would be amazed at how much shit you can store in a space like that. It has been 11 years.
I did get involved in the removal of stuff from the shelves and its disposition.
A lot of memories here. A playpen. A booster seat. Some kid games. All to the resale store.
My ten years of paper for the tax audit we haven't had yet were still there in their plastic store bags. John went and got file boxes for them so they are still there but in cardboard. Waiting. It is OK with me if I never use them.
The bags were all disorganized. I just put them in the boxes the same way. I figure I will sort to order if necessary. In the meantime there are better things to do.
There is some weirdness in an activity like this. "Why did we save this"?
Silence.
Some of that stuff went to the used stuff store (a drawer from the kitchen renovation with its hardware--can they use that? Dunno. We dropped it off anyway. Now it's their problem). Some of it went back into the closet.
Very little went to trash. Interesting.
This kind of cleanout is good for us. We get to see a little history and we get to clear it away.
I suppose someday there will be more little kids but that would be great-grand kids and they can bring their own booster seats.
Saturday, November 24, 2007
LAP TOP
The gang has left.
We had six people for the week.
Two of the people were little boys. Four and eight.
They are still at the age where they will sit on a Poppa's lap.
The younger one will just burrow into a snuggle. The older one needs a bit of purpose to it like talking something over.
I am told that these are the last in a line of six grands.
The end of lap sitting.
It is OK.
It is more than worth it to see the kids grow into their unique personalities.
I have had my share of lap time.
Five kids, six grands.
Something to be grateful for at this time of year.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
BY KIDS FOR KIDS
I was a long time GAP customer before it all went to hell.
Now, they have a whole new approach to marketing. This is one of their new avenues.
Gap Unveils New 'For Kids By Kids' Clothing Line
Labels: kidtime
Saturday, March 31, 2007
ESTEEM
I am a long time skeptic of the 'self esteem' movement.
I do not subscribe to the fact that low self esteem can be remedied by false praise or 'positive reinforcement'. I am not even sure that it should be.
When I was a trainer, the concepts flowed into the rooms where I taught.
I wasn't too sympathetic with the excuse (as I heard it) of low self esteem. I still am not.
There is no doubt that there are many kids and adults who have low self esteem. Nor, is there any doubt that a lot of kids and people have too much.
My observations support my hypothesis that it is a lot easier to deal with low self esteem than the high.
Arrogance, entitlement, selfishness, ego-drive; all seem to go with a strong positive sense of self. In fact undue, unearned praise creates this condition.
But, I lost the battle and quit talking about it although, one on one, I will still take on any one who I hear whining and complaining, usually blaming someone else, for how bad they feel about themselves.
This article is interesting as it breaks some of the sacred icons of the esteem movement (and yes, it is a movement and a profitable industry).
I can identify with their contention about 'smart' kids.
I was a smart kid and was labeled as such.
I invested in it. It became my identity.
They even told me (against the rules and conventions) my IQ (mensa) and what it meant.
It froze me.
I began to fear failure.
The kids in this study are me.
Maybe that is why I am so sensitive to this cockeyed notion that you should pump everybody up. There should be no differences. All that.
Interesting.
Labels: kidtime, Self Absorption
Saturday, March 24, 2007
THE KID
Yesterday when I was shopping I noticed a boy about 12 years old walking the aisles.
He looked tough. Through the mill. Streetwise.
He had a limp and, close up, I could see that he was shivering.
Well, I was shivering too but not that way. It was cold in the store.
It looked like some kind of trauma to me.
What to do?
Then he disappeared.
An aisle or two later, he appeared again. I got the idea that he wanted to be inconspicuous but he was doing a poor job of it.
We were in the soda aisle and he went and took one of the most esoteric designer sodas (cream flavored-four glass bottles in a cute carrier) and went around the aisle corner again.
He was dressed sort of like other kids are. Big big 'satin' shorts and a thin jacket.
He wasn't clean.
I had the idea to ask him if everything was all right but then I could not do it.
I don't think that it was a matter of 'not getting involved'. After all, there wasn't much to get involved in.
I just wanted to ask him.
I told the checker, who I know pretty well, about it.
He said that they come in there all the time.
They.
Kids hiding out, Kids shoplifting. Kids on the loose. Kids.
The store people don't do anything unless there is trouble. In fact, they are told not to do anything as it could be construed as 'an approach'.
I thought about that awhile. Reluctance to act for fear of getting involved in some kind of 'molesting' charge or something.
The checker friend said to leave it alone. He would look out for the kid and see if he was one of the regulars.
I take it from his comments that he would not really do that unless there was 'trouble'.
When I left the store, the kid was just outside the doors and came in the exit door as I went out. Shit. Another opportunity to say something.
It bothered me most of the day.
Should I have said or done something?
Maybe I should have called a cop. In their store? Not likely.
How about social services? Oh man; come on.
What was going on with the kid?
He was the age of my oldest grandson. Like that.
I suppose that it is possible that he was in the store with his affluent mother who was just around the corner and paid for the cream soda and all.
I don't think so.
I was a country kid.
When I moved to the city for college, I remember being astonished to see so many loose kids all over. The veterans called them 'urchins'.
They were all over Cambridge. You ignored them. Dirty, unkempt and delinquent and all in need of attention, love, protection. But they were treated more or less like stray dogs. Keep outta my way!
When we lived in the South End of Boston, we didn't see kids that age. Teenagers on the loose, yes. Not the 12's.
I never see any of that here, I am so sheltered.
When I was a kid, we ran loose all the time. If you behaved and people knew your parents you were pretty much ignored.
If your family had a 'reputation', perhaps lower class, then it was different.
I would like to think that older people looked out for kids then but I am not sure that is the case.
Mr. Vernoy, down the street, made my friend David blow him for almost a year before anyone on the street knew it was on.
There are no 'good old days' in this department.
I thought more about this kid last night and I realized that it was not school time. Almost but not. That is really the time that loose kids get noticed.
I don't know. It has just freaked me out. All my parent stuff has risen to the top.
It bothers me that today older people are afraid to get involved with kids because there is the danger of being seen as messing with them. Or somehow be accused by the kid himself.
Teachers and priests tell me that it is a problem even in their line of work.
That sure is different than the old days.
I don't know.
I just thought I would write about it.
I can't do anything about my lack of action. Or even know if it was appropriate.
I am repeating myself.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
MULE TRAIN STOPS
When I was a kid, I loved to listen to
He had a big voice and seemed to have a generous heart. There was not a time that he did not have a hit going on the charts.
He was also cool when cool was not something crooners had.
He got tagged as a singer for western television shows and movies.
One of his best bits was as the voice over the theme in Blazing Saddles.
I am writing about him because he died today at 93!
Good for him.
I aspire to that ripe age or its environs.
He comes alive on his website
