Pointing Out the Obvious
Preaching to the Choir
And Whistling in the Dark
I wish I could give my grandkids the childhood that I had.
As a kid I thought I was depressed, abused, mistreated (especially by my sister), overworked, exploited, deprived, ignored, etc…ad infinitum.
My grandkids should be so lucky.
I learned what makes things work. What it takes to catch a fish. What to do about the things that do not work. I learned about manners, morals, and how to be true to your self. I learned a work ethic kids today will never know.
I learned how to stand up for myself and be responsible for my actions.
When I was 12 life was a great adventure.
I had read a lot of books in school by then and I had started on Science Fiction the year before.
I remember the librarian reluctantly letting me have adult Science Fiction books at the age of eleven.
It was not easy, but I convinced her, and I read everything I could get my hands on. The thing about Science Fiction that I liked was that it was based on fact and did not violate the laws of physics. Yeah, at the age of eleven I was beginning to know about physics. Today what you get is Science Fiction blended with (corrupted by) Fantasy, it may be entertaining but you will not learn anything. There are still science based Science Fiction books, but you have to look hard for them.
I had gone to school in a very small rural town. The third, fourth, and fifth grades were in the same room. That means I had two thirds of the school day to read; so by the time I finished the fifth grade I had read every book in the school library. I suppose it also means that I went to the third, forth, and fifth grades three times. I was an avid reader and read whenever my grade was not in session. I recall once happily reading a book when a box of cough drops landed on my desk. My teacher had tossed the box on my desk because I was not paying attention and my grade was in session. Being quick witted, and astutely aware of my surroundings, I took a cough drop from the box, tossed the box back to my teacher’s desk and returned to my book reading. Turned out that was not one of my better choices of action.
Back then I walked to school (yeah, I know, uphill both ways barefoot in three foot of snow at minus 100 degrees in Oklahoma). School was only four blocks south of us, the town limits were just past the school. The town’s northern limit was one block north of our house. The town’s plat was only 88 acres and it never reached that size. At its most it had a blacksmith shop (my grandfather’s), a post office that was in one of the two grocery stores, a drug store, a bank, two filling stations (19 cents a gallon), a black and white movie theater (twelve by twenty feet), and a railroad station near the river about half a mile away.
I could ride my bicycle, an old one speed with balloon tires, ten miles to play with my cousin and my parents did not worry. They knew I had earned my bicycle by picking cotton and would be careful not to wreck it. They also knew I had built my own downhill death trap out of a pair of old skates and scrap wood. You see, what you do is make a frame that you can sit on with half of a pair of skates on either side in the back and a cross piece in the front that pivots in the middle with the remaining two halves of the skates on the left and right sides. You steer with your feet on the left and right sides of the cross piece. Then you find a road, or a street, that goes down hill. Then you sit back and enjoy the wind in your face. This works pretty good until you hit a pot-hole or other bad stretch of road, gravel is a real bummer, then you get what I later learned bikers call “road rash”. Road rash is not terminal, but you will learn to avoid it. (Thank God for turpentine) My parents knew if I had survived this contraption, nothing could hurt me and I would keep pushing and finding my limits no matter what they said. They gave me guidance, when I would let them, but they had the wisdom to let me make my own mistakes.
The school yard in this little town had swings, monkey bars, see-saws, and an old style merry-go-round. This one was supported from the top and would swing as well as rotate. Great fun; we boys could really get this thing going and scare the girls, made our whole day! (Little did we know when we grew up, the girls would get even, and then some)
(Click the image for a larger version)
These things are banned now; you might fall off and get your clothes dirty.
The nanny state government wants to protect kids from everything but the nanny state government.
If you get a scratch or bruise while playing, you might learn your physical limits, how to control yourself, and how to avoid injuries. God forbid you should play baseball, basketball, football, tag, hop-scotch, dodge-ball, basketball, or any other game that can teach you hand-eye coordination. You might grow up with confidence in yourself and not depend on the hand of nanny government to guide you.
But I rant.
My grandfather taught me how to use an acetylene torch and an arc welder while I was still a thirteen year old kid. He taught me how to look at a length of metal and tell if it was straight. I learned to use a coal burning forge, trip-hammer, grinder, drill press, hammer and anvil, block and tackle, come-a-long, axe, posthole digger, and every other tool that existed in the fifties, including fishing poles. He taught me about life, ladies, morals, honesty, and being a man.
Today’s kids are being cheated.
They will never learn about defeat and success in time for it to have any meaning.
They have not been given the training to think for themselves or even form their own opinions.
They are deep in debt, thanks to Obama and the democrats, and are very near bankruptcy from the day they were born and they stand very little chance of recovering.
They need a playground free of nannies. They need to experience the scraps and bangs of childhood. They need to stick their tongues on a frozen flagpole. They need to bleed a little and learn what causes pain. They need to understand cause and effect by personally experiencing cause and effect. You can not learn by someone else’s experience, you must have that experience. “Once burned, twice shy” means you have to be burned to understand heat. You will not know what a scorpion sting means until you have been stung by one. We do not help our children by protecting them from non-life threatening things.
Obamacare gives the government the power to control every aspect of your life, even how long that life will be.
Soon the nannies will give you a world where salt will not be allowed on your over-cooked steak and your “French Fries” will be cooked in boiling hot water. There will be no sour cream or butter, and your “organic” salad will cost far more than your steak; by then steak will be outlawed in 55 of the 57 states. God bless Texas and Oklahoma, we will refrain from this bull shit “nanny state”.
The trouble here is that I am saying things that rational people already know.
I do not know how to reach the irrational.
I want to grab these idiots by the shirt/blouse, shake them, and as my grandmother would say “slap some sense in their heads”, and make them understand that they are destroying their children’s future with their idiotic over-protection.
If I had never been stung by a red ant, I would not know that the red ant could hurt me.
Luckily I have been stung by scorpions, bees, wasps, hornets, bumblebees, red ants, fire ants, black ants, governments, wives, banks, politicians, and even friends.
I have learned to pay attention, and I bite back.
Approach me with caution.