Sunday, February 12, 2006

I shelter my kids

Yes, I shelter my kids. And apparently that's a problem. What I should do is send them to school. At school, along with all that great learning, they will learn how to BE in the REAL WORLD. And this must be true because as we all know, schools are bastions of reality, the very home of realness. All things really real can be found through those doors.
Yes, I shelter my kids, and one day they will be forced into the daylight of grown up where they will be fully unprepared for life. Okay, someone needs to invent a way to type sarcastically, perhaps a universally understood font that would be read sarcasitally.
In real life, you will be shaken down daily for whatever cash you have in your pocket. By the way, this is not mugging, it's called bullying. In real life, your boss will make you raise your hand if you need to pee, even if he's kept you so busy doing meaningless work that you've had to wait a really long time and really need to pee. In real life, if you wear your favorite shirt and your coworkers decide it isn't cool enough, they will steal your back pack and kick it around the office.
Yes, I shelter my kids and will continue to do so. They will always have the benefit of this shelter until I'm too old to provide it, at which time, if I've done my job as a parent, they will be willing to help me find shelter.
In addition to sheltering my children from the violence and intimidation of the school, I am sheltering them from various bad attitudes. I'm sheltering them from racism and homophobia. My goal is not to raise children that feel sheltered or isolated. I want more for my children than the school can give. I want wide open frontiers, not brick walls and desks.
Yes I shelter my kids.

sorry Mr. Friedman

In my last post, I completely misspelled the name of the blogger from whom I got the idea for the blog I wrote. Okay, so I didn't actually misspell his name. His name is David and I referred to him as Robert. I'm guessing he's the only one who read the damn thing and probably only because he saw that I'd linked to him.
So, if David Friedman shows back up 'round these parts, I'm sorry that I couldn't manage to remember your name while clicking between tabs to try and get my info for the links. I'm really usually slightly brighter than that.
In my defense, I will say that Robert is a very nice name, and maybe you'd like to try it out for a day or two, which is not to demean David, also a nice name.
Actually, we can all just stick with the names we have. I think once we start name switching it's all just going to get silly.
And speaking of silly, I should also probably apologize for this entire post. I'm attempting intended silliness, but I really have my doubts as to the success.