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Grand-brat Education, Newfangled Gizmos and Modern Parties

   Written by on November 14, 2013 at 7:37 am

The daughter just called to complain that I was teaching her son questionable information. Last month the Grand-brat (age 4) asked why the leaves fell off the trees. Since I believe you should stuff as much information into little brains as possible I explained. It seems the G-brat just informed his mother, “Leaves fall off of the trees and turn into dirt. Then the roots of trees and plants suck up the dirt for food and it causes the trees to grow new leaves.” Then he added, “God did this because it makes Faux Pa happy.”

logo-rural legendsSo, what’s wrong with that? If the Grand-brat believes I am the center of the universe and that God has spent millions of years designing the earth for my benefit, why should I disagree? I certainly don’t have any complaints.

The daughter says there are some theological issues with a Faux Pa Centric Universe but that’s her issue to resolve. I’ll refer her to Mark Twain’s “The Mysterious Stranger.” Maybe that will put it all in perspective.

We attended my 40th high school reunion last weekend and had a nice time. I was accused of several things I didn’t and don’t remember. Either some of my old classmates or I seem to be forgetting things or remembering things that didn’t happen. There was some discussion of a beverage called Purple Passion and some things that allegedly occurred following the consumption of said beverage. There were mentions of a four-day party that I don’t intend to remember. Some things are best forgotten.

The odd thing was how old most of my classmates have gotten. I certainly haven’t. I’ve gotten fatter, balder and grumpier but not older. I’m still a kid and plan to stay that way.

The reunion was at the Country Club. If I remember correctly many of our 70’s parties ended at the same Country Club. This time could have been different. We wouldn’t have had to climb the fence to get to the pool.

A lot of my former classmates are a lot more technologically advanced than I. They talked about Fez-book, Webba-dresses and Tweeder. They know more than I’ll ever care to know about television, movie and public personalities.

I was reminded about one of my early concerns with cell phones. Several old friends gave me their cell phone numbers and I gave them mine. Forty years ago if someone asked for your cell number it would have meant you were incarcerated.

My cell phone concern is the ease of communication. Way back in the 70’s there weren’t any such things as cell phones. Some of us in the country still had party lines. If you remember party line telephones, you are older than my classmates. With a party line if your phone rang is wasn’t necessarily for you. You had to listen for your personal ring.

Your ring might be ring-brring-ring. The other line might be brring-ring-ring. You only answered your ring AND if you picked up your phone the other folks might already be talking.

Enough of that ancient history. Cell phones have made communication faster. Suppose you wanted to have a small party as a teenager in the 70’s. You would spread the word at school, at the Tastee Freeze and the Drive-In. Folks would show up. Some would leave to find missing folks but some folks would never know a party was happening.

In the 70’s you might accidentally have a party with a couple of hundred folks you didn’t know but nothing excessive. Today, a teenager could start out with a dozen folks and with cell phones, tweeder, texting, and whatever else they can do, they could end up with a thousand folks. As a teenager I would have thought that was great BUT as a father and grandfather that sounds bad to me.

On the other hand I made a promise to myself forty years ago that if I ever had kids I would NEVER leave them home alone with the potential for an unsupervised party. Let’s just say I had a premonition of potential disaster way back then.

But back to the reunion. It was delightful to see my old classmates. For the most part they have matured and appreciated and it was a nice party. Everyone behaved, nobody got hurt and we left before anyone could cell phone for reinforcements.

AND nobody jumped into the pool- not even me.

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