stranger danger and the need for correct punctuation

Due to some unfortunate circumstances with one of our children, my best friend and I had a conversation the other night about the evils of technology. You may consider this to be hypocritical considering the avenue to which this information is coming to you but I would prefer to look at it as ironic. I am going to make myself sound old with the following statement, but I can't believe how much the world has changed in the last 15 years. Practically every person over the age of 12 has a cell phone. Even my 76 year old mother uses one! Hardly anyone writes checks anymore or even mails their bills. Hell, we don't even get actual paper bills. We use debit cards and pay for things over the phone or online. We view our bank statements, and all of our bills with the click of a mouse. If you have a computer, a debit card, and reliable internet service it is feasible to take care of everything in your life without ever leaving your home. Food, clothing, medicine, you name it and it can be delivered to you for the right price. In the beginning this was exciting. How much easier life would be! We could now talk on the phone no matter where we were or what we were doing. We could conduct business or catch up on personal news 24/7. We could email someone and instant message and not have to wait days for a letter to get to someone and days again for the reply. We could fax documents! Instant receipt of contracts and signatures. How awesome this is. Then the social networks arrived. Myspace and Facebook allowed us to connect to long lost friends and even strangers. Again, this is amazing, right? Not so much. Flash forward a few years. We are now connected to people 24 hours a day no matter where we are. You can even connect to the internet using your phone! In the life of an adult this is sometimes overwhelming. I miss the days of getting in the car and going shopping without getting twenty phone calls or text messages. There is no peace and quiet. In the life of a teenager, this means staying connected to the already dramatic world that teens live in. There is no escape for them. Everyone knows everything about everyone else and they know it in the instant it takes to hit "send". They also leave themselves open to the risk of exposure to strangers. Gone are the days of the 'don't talk to strangers' talks. Now we have to say don't talk to, instant message, accept email or friend requests from, or any in form, in person or via the phone or internet, have any contact with or give information to someone you do not know or have not had in-person contact with and who is not known by your parent or legal guardian. Does that cover it? Possibly, but only for today. Something will change soon that will have to be added to the warning. The internet has given us all a supposedly secure anonymity. It's ok to talk to strangers online. It's ok to say things online or via text that you would never have the nerve to say to their face. Things seem harmless under the veil of this security blanket. Well let me tell you, they are not harmless. I know of several young and truly innocent kids who have said things and done things online that they would never do in person and they really have a hard time processing that those actions are one in the same. I know of more than one couple who is currently having some serious marital trouble because some online flirting got out of hand. When does virtual cheating become real? Do we even know the difference anymore?

A less ugly side of this situation, though just as serious, is the erosion of our language. We communicate in abbreviations without punctuation or capitalization. Btw, omg, oic, and on and on. Our kids are growing up in a world without actual written word. Spell check covers their butts with no mind to the fact that spelling and context are two different things. The handwriting of most kids is not even legible because they have no need to practice it. Words are not the form of art that they once were. This makes me sad. As a lover of language, I won't let it go without a fight. I don't want our children to think that communication comes only in the form of a computer or a phone. I want them to know how to write a letter and to introduce themselves face to face while making eye contact. I want them to be articulate, well mannered, well spoken individuals. I do not believe that is too much to ask or an outdated concept.

So, do I think that communication technology should be abandoned or that it is, in itself, responsible for the evil of the world? I do not. I myself will continue to enjoy using Facebook to communicate with friends and co-workers. I will also blog and shop online. I will text and make calls from the car or the elevator or wherever I happen to be. However, I will also make a better effort to make written contact with people. I will send a greeting card or letter to someone. I am going to start keeping a written journal as well. I will also encourage my children (both my birth kids and my school kids) to do these things as well. Life is changing and that is not always a bad thing but life is also HAPPENING and it is happening away from the computer screen. Go out and experience it and maybe even pick up a pen and some paper and write about it!

My Karma TO DO List

I have decided that my ridiculously bad luck stems from some kind of bad karma. Apparently I do not emit the right vibes to make good things come my way. EVER. So I am going to make a legitimate effort to do some things to redirect the current wave of yuck that is my life. I will now treat you to my list of ideas. For those of you that know me personally, please refrain from laughing.

1. BE KIND TO PEOPLE WHO ARE UNKIND Yes. I am serious. I figure if nothing else it will throw them off balance enough to get away from them.

2. STOP SAYING THE "F" WORD. Again, I am serious. Ok, maybe not stop entirely but limit it to a "need to" basis and yes, there are some times that you NEED to drop the f bomb. Surely that will eliminate some of them? Right?

3. LOVE WHAT I HAVE. You know, appreciate the 125 purses I have instead of wanting another one. I need to minimize some of the junk in my life both the material and mental.

4. COMMIT TO SOME LIFESTYLE CHANGES Here is where the laughter really belongs. I need to eat better and get into a normal and regular sleep pattern. I suppose I need to throw exercise in there too.

5. TRY TO FIND SOMETHING TO BE THANKFUL FOR EVERYDAY. Self-explanatory I assume.

6. HAVE A POSITIVE THOUGHT FOR EVERY NEGATIVE ONE THAT I HAVE. Also self-explanatory.

So it is not really a long list. I figure you have to start somewhere. I will keep you updated on my experiment. :)

I remember being that age!

As my children have found their way into adulthood, I have found myself in that puzzling place where I think of them as the "kids" yet I remember being that age and feeling like anything but a "kid". I cook for them and do their laundry and baby them and they like that. They like that EXCEPT when they suddenly want to exert their independence. I hear " I am an adult. I don't need you to do A, B, or C." I hear "I can take care of myself. I don't need you to wonder when I will be home." I hear these things from the same people who text me "Mama, what are you fixing for dinner?" and "Mama, will you make cookies?" and "Did you wash my work shirts?". I think there needs to be a manual detailing things that mothers are allowed and not allowed to do for children over the age of 18. I try to give them room. I really do remember being that age. I remember thinking that I did not need anyone to tell me what to do anymore. However, I was also married and a mother when I was 20. Do I wish that for either of my grown children? NO. NO. Ten times NO. I do, however, wish they understood some of that responsibility. They need to understand that they can't really have it both ways. Kid on one side and adult on the other. To quote one of my favorite movies, "You can't ride two horses with one ass, sugarbean.", please make my kids/adults understand that!

Let the music move you

I am always amazed by the power of music. It has the ability to evoke so many emotions in me. The right song can move me to tears or take me back to a warm summer evening in a car with the windows rolled down. I don't believe that music can make you do things you don't want to. Please do not mistake this for some Tipper Gore inspired rant about playing songs backwards or heavy metal being responsible for a sudden spike in murders. She was, and probably still is, delusional. Kids don't kill because they are following subliminal orders from Ozzy and lord only knows that people were masturbating long before Prince recorded his first song. I am just pointing out that music truly is mood altering. I believe in can sooth the savage beast as the saying goes. Music with the right beat has been proven to calm a person and change their brainwave pattern. Science aside, music has power.The power to take make us laugh or smile. Sing along at the top of our lungs or silently with tears streaming down our faces. It has the power to take us to a different place and time. Certain songs can almost make me SMELL the suntan lotion and salt water. For instance, Hot Child in the City will place me in my sister's jeep on our way to get yogurt. I am far older than my 7 years riding in that jeep. The wind is blowing in my hair and I am excited at the prospect of staying at my sister's house where I could stay up late and eat whatever I want. Any track from Van Halen's 1984 puts me on a boat lazily floating the lake with my family. Too Young to Fall in love brings me face to face with the first boy to make my heart skip a beat. I can smell his cologne and see his shaggy blond hair as clear as if I could reach out and touch him. Appetite for Destruction will return me to the beaches of Southern California the summer before my senior year and many crazy days and nights spent in "hollyweird". The right song from that album will carry me into my senior year and put me in a car with my best friend trying to figure out how to hide boys from her dad. Youth Gone Wild will find me in the parking lot of my high school burning our senior flag with my classmates, many of whom I would not see again for 20 years. There are many, many more songs in my soundtrack of life. I don't have the time or space, nor do you probably have the inclination to read them all. My point is that maybe music is the illusive time machine the sci-fi junkies search for. Maybe we do have the power to be somewhere in the past. Maybe all we need is the right beat........

Until next time...

R

Make a list and check it twice.......

So I read this article that said to put your life in perspective you should make a list of all the things you have accomplished or done and make a list of things you still wish to do. The idea is that once you write down all the things you really have done, you will see how big your life has really been. You are supposed to discover that your life has more done than undone. Yeah, well that didn't work for me. Huge surprise. Don't get me wrong. I really have done a lot in life. Maybe not earth shattering accomplishments like the cure for some insidious disease but not too shabby stuff. Seen a lot of places, read a lot of great literature, been to some treasures of the earth, raised 3 pretty cool humans, taught a large number of children to read......you get the idea. However, my list of undone is HUGE. I want to: write a book, spend an extended period of time in Ireland and perhaps never come back, teach English as a second language to children for whom it will have life changing effects, make my father proud, have grandchildren, stick my foot in every ocean on the planet (I have 2 left), and the list goes on and on. I started out thinking I would feel accomplished at the end of the exercise but it has only spurred me on to move more things to the "done" side. Wish me luck.

aging sucks.

Ok. I am on the downhill side of the slide to the big 4-0. How did this happen? I am sure I was a teenager just last week. I have never been one to freak out about age. It's just a number, right? However, as that number has increased, so has the intensity of my..... what? Fear? Anxiety? Sadness? All of the above? I AM afraid. Afraid that my life is half over. Anxious about unresolved things. Issues out of my control or out of my grasp. Sad about things left undone, unexplored, unexperienced. I always thought that people who rattled about a mid-life crisis were whiners using their dwindling days on the planet to give one last try at being young or having material things they always wanted. I no longer think that's the case. This is real and this is scary. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up! Time seems to be speeding up and it is truly getting away from me. How do you make it stop? I wonder if everyone goes through this. I wonder how to resolve it. I wonder............