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It Never Fails

No matter how organized we try to be, no matter how far in advance we try to look at the calendar and no matter what our past experiences are, we always seem to get taken by surprise.  It begs the question, are we stupid or is this just the way things are or do we just get told these things in passing at 10:30pm at night or did the teacher not post it or did the coach not know about it or does anyone even give a crap?

For instance, a young lady asked our son to a dance earlier this year.  What we would call a Sadie Hawkins dance, they call MORP(prom spelled backwards).  Well, the day of the dance a water polo tournament is scheduled.  A water polo tournament goes on all day long and is exhausting for those who do not know.  Well, let’s just say it provided a lot of stress to our son who ended up having to race home from La Jolla, jump in the shower, shove some food down his throat and meet his date at the dance.  Is this good stress or bad stress?  I guess that’s just the way life is, but it happens so often.

Prom is this Saturday night and he has had this planned and arranged now for a month.  We didn’t even know juniors could attend since at our high school only seniors were allowed to attend.  In total, we will probably be spending somewhere between two and three hundred dollars on prom.  A group of them are supposed to meet for dinner and photos at 5:30pm and then take a party bus to the venue.  Well, it turns out he made CIF swim finals that are the same day and start at 3:00pm in the afternoon.  This was a surprise to him and us because his times haven’t been good enough for consideration and  yet he has been honored with the invitation.  He would have to have the race of his life to win this thing.  What to do? 

Same goes for my daughter.  Her varsity dance team is doing a two night performance this Friday and Saturday night.  It’s a big deal.  They have been practicing long and hard all semester for this show and these young ladies are talented dancers.  You would enjoy the show.  Well, her private dance group booked a competition in Palm Springs on Saturday and Sunday.  She’s doing full rehearsals at the school and going to the studio at 9:00pm to practice for the weekend competition.  This stuff just gets out of hand.  She will be a zombie when she gets home on Sunday evening.

Can we foresee this stuff.  Well, the Mrs. and I try to really stay up on things on the calendar.  With the two school websites, twelve teacher websites, all the aquatics emails, the changes in all the schedules that pop up and the teens not delivering the information in a timely manner, I guess this is just the way it is for now.  Not to mention, the SAT prep classes, the SAT test, the ACT test and the driving to colleges and looking for a summer job and all the homework and AP tests.  I went to a great college and don’t remember anything in high school being this crazy busy.

At this age we and the teachers put all of the communication through the kids, so that they grow up to take care of themselves, but things fall through the cracks and there are the unexpected things. 

Thank goodness Stewart drives himself around and Jennifer will be driving herself in a few months.  Maybe we will have all this down by the time Jacqueline’s a senior:)

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Dating Part Deux

“Dad, I read your blog.” says Jennifer.

“Cool, you can’t date until your sixteen.” advises dad.

“What about your blog and when I’m ready for boys and dating?”  she asks.

“You are never going to be ready!” laughs mom.

This brings up the whole other half of the equation.  What about your daughter’s dating?  I think it’s fair to say that it’s a subject many dad’s jest about, like the shotgun in the lap, but in reality don’t want to talk about it.  My sister passed away at twelve years old, so I did not get to witness any future teenage years involving my parents and my sister.  You could say that I am completely clueless on how to deal with my daughter and future boyfriends that will come into the picture, so I am thankful that my oldest is a son and that I have been able to watch how his female friends’ parents handle things thus far.

The number one rule seems to be have the boys come to your house.  We haven’t seen much of my son over the last year on Friday and Saturday night because there is always something going on at some young lady’s house.  The daughter stays home and invites over a handful of people for playing on the Wii, scrabble, movies, ect.  The crowd is always co-ed and the parents are always home.  Some smart people sure live around here.

Not to be biased, but my daughter is blonde, blue-eyed and 5′9″ and getting taller by the minute.  I know the boys are going to be coming, but we still have time.  She is still taller than most boys her age and that can be intimidating to the young men.  She still seems interested in just hanging out with her girlfriends. 

Got to go polish my shotgun.  See ya!

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Dating in The 21st Century

When you have teenagers, you eventually,  at some point have to deal with the interactions of male and female.  Long gone are the days of skateboarding for four straight hours or choreographing dances for hours with your friend in front of the bedroom mirror.  The girls become boy crazy and the boys are well, you know.  The wife and I told our oldest that he couldn’t date or have a girlfriend until sixteen years of age.  Why this date?  We have no idea.  It just sounded like a good milestone if you know what I mean.  Well, he wasn’t satisfied with that and went out and got himself a girlfriend at fifteen.  It immediately brought me back to my high school days and unpleasant interactions with my parents in regards to dating and girlfriends.  My gut reaction told me that just because we’re not ready doesn’t mean he’s not ready and we need to go on his time table and not ours.  I am happy with that decision thus far and I think it was right on.

That girlfriend came and went.  A year has passed and now we have a new young lady on the horizon.  However, things are a bit different this time because they’re driving!  I remember the days of driving around with my girlfriend.  Is this not a right of passage in America?  Cruising the streets on Saturday night with your hottie snuggled up against you.  Well, not anymore.  This wonderful thing called the government has intruded into our lives once again.  Please spare yourself from sending me emails on teen driving safety.  You can’t have a passenger in the car until your seventeen.  I personally think this stinks for the kids and I know there are a lot of people who disagree with me.  This sure doesn’t deter the kids.  They don’t know any better.  It is actually very cute to watch my son drive off and his girlfriend follow right behind in her car.  A lot of gas is being burned, but who cares about air quality. 

The driving laws have actually changed things more than you think.  We are delaying responsibility, accountability, and discipline another year.  It’s what I call the pampering of America.  It has also caused a lot of temptation and peer pressure onto the teen driver to take on passengers.  It can put families that were on good terms with eachother into a difficult spot based on your personal feelings on the whether the law is right or not.  “Why can’t my daughter just ride with your daughter to soccer practice?”  It’s against the law that’s why.  I see lots of teens that have no interest in getting their driver’s license.  I have even seen parents discourage their teens from driving.  I don’t have any data but I would put money on the government influencing people’s thoughts over the years and subtly changing the laws slow enough that no one notices because we all only have our teens for a handful of years anyways and we’re off to other things by the time these events are upon us.

The most bizarre invention I’ve heard of is the “group date.”  Where you never have a boyfriend or girlfriend or date anyone and a group of people just hang out.  It’s great to hang out and you can always find someone to hang out with, but eventually there needs to be one on one interactions between the sexes.  They need to learn how to cope and deal with the opposite sex in a one on one setting where their beliefs and upbringing can be tested, where temptation is resisted or given into, where that fine line between fun and flirtatious and inappropriate is found and mommy and daddy or Uncle Sam can’t be in the back seat of the car saying don’t do that.  Can pop culture be imitating society with the Lady Gaga generation, androgynous metrosexuals?  I hope not, all in the spirit of teaching these youngsters to be ladies and gentlemen.

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It Actually Works!

I liken parenting to running a marathon.  There is  nothing short, fast speedy, quick about being a mom or a dad.  Parenting is a long journey.  In a marathon, you may feel great at mile three, crappy at mile nine and great again at mile thirteen.  In a marathon, you may feel dehydrated, tired, pull a muscle and maybe collapse.

As a parent, all the business distracts you from the passage of time.  You live in a world of carpools, homework, science projects, essays, church activities, sports, piano lessons, tap dancing or whatever it maybe.  Time takes on the dimensions of do this and don’t do that.  Did you say please?  Did you say thank you?  Look the person in eye and say hello.  Sit up straight.  Eat your vegetables.  Stop crying.  No biting.  Time is moving at a much faster rate than you realize when you’re parenting.  All the business of parenting makes the years go by fast and pretty soon you look in the mirror and say what the hell happened to me?  You just hope and pray that everything you have tried to teach them will sink in and they will grow up to be good people.

Every Sunday morning, Karen and I go swim for an hour and a half.  We then race home, change clothes, eat something real quick and then race to church with the kids.  On Mother’s Day, before Karen and I left for the pool, I told the kids if they didn’t have anything for their mother, they had a good hour or so to make a card, eat some cereal and be ready for church.  We had a dinner party the night before and still had the banquet tables out and the kitchen was full  of dishes.

Lo and behold, when we got home, there was a present and cards on the table.  The banquet tables were packed  up and put away.  Decorations were put up on the walls.  The dishes were all cleaned.  Our bed was made and my son had bacon, eggs and toast all ready for everyone.  All three of them worked together in harmony to honor their mom who does so much for them.  We were surprised and tickled pink.  This was the best mother’s day they could have given their mom.  I am so impressed that I don’t expect anything for father’s day.

Feeling pretty good around mile fifteen right about now.

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Flu This

The Hooks family just completed one week of barf-o-rama.  So far, I am the lucky one that seems to have eluded the illness but I do have an impending sense of doom that something bad is going to happen at any moment.  It all started eight days ago when we got the call from school that Jacqueline was vomiting and needed to be picked up.  Karen leaves work early and then has to stay home on Tuesday while our little one just lays on the couch and watches television and sleeps.  It’s not too bad staying home from school for the kids when you have three hundred channels to choose from.  I remember when the choices were “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” or “That Girl” and you were dying to go back to school just to get away from the bad television and the boredom.

Of course, Karen had planned on taking Veteran’s Day off but had to work after missing the day before, so I decided to stay home last Wednesday.  It was a good day.  I had the kids work like slaves and we cleaned the place up nice and neat.  We decided to go to the new Sonic that opened up that all the kids are talking about.  Crazy, the line of cars was an hour long for food.  It’s sad that the most exciting thing to happen in Vista in the last twenty years is a Sonic opening up, but who am I to pass judgement on this little town.  Anyways, all was good until Jennifer walked in the door from her friend’s house at 5:15pm bawling her head off.  In trying to console her, we gathered that she had puked in the street right before walking in the front door.  We got another sickie poo!  Wait, what is that I hear?  Mom just got home and she’s puking.  We’re on a roll now.  Stewart gets it on Friday, but didn’t actually puke until Sunday.  Weird.  I’m just thankful that I have still dodged the bullet.  The puking comes on suddenly with no warning.  I sat in a conference room with twelve people all day Friday praying that I wouldn’t spew all over everyone. 

All I see and hear about seems to be getting vaccinated for the flu and H1N1.  No, thank you.  My father had heart disease and was strongly urged to get the flu shot every year by his cardiologist.  He and my mom got the flu shot every year and then proceeded to get the flu about two weeks later.  Call me superstitious.  Karen got the flu shot and then she gets the flu.  I think she might even have had the flu twice in the last month and now she has to get the H1N1 shot because she works for a health care provider.  Suey! 

I hope everyone has a healthy Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Nothing worse than being ill over the holidays.  Take your vitamin C.

Flu this.

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Fundraising From Hell

I want you to think back to when you were a kid.  Do you remember “No Soliciting” signs on the front doors of businesses and houses?  It was a different time before email and websites and eight hundred television stations.  There were actually door to door salesman that would walk around trying to sell you stuff because it was one of the ways available to get their product in front of you.  It actually was so prevalent that people would get pissed from having their front door bell rang all the time, they put these signs up giving you fair warning not to knock on their door.  I can still remember my father slamming the door in the face of some guy from Greenpeace way back when.

When we signed our son up for little league, you had to assist the league in fundraising.  This was done by having each family sell a box of about twenty candy bars.  You either take the time to sell the candy bars or you pay an additional forty dollars cash up front for the registration fee if you want your kid to play baseball.  We take the chocolate bars and walk around the neighborhood once and sell maybe one or two candy bars.  What are we gonna do with the rest of them?  You give it three or four weeks and they magically disappear into my mouth, my wife’s mouth and my kids’ mouths.  Now, we’ve eaten all the candy and have to pay for it.  Good grief! 

The door to door salesman still exists but in a different form and for a different purpose.  They are all cute little boys and girls walking around the neighborhoods in some kind  of uniform or another with freckles and ballcaps or ribbons in their hair.  The typical for sale items are magazines, wrapping paper, popcorn, candy and cookies.  It’s the perfect scam getting the children to do the dirty work for all of these organizations that supposedly need money and it’s high time it stopped.  It’s the same old sob story with the teacher’s, the schools, the pta, the girl scouts, the cub scouts and so on.  If we don’t fundraise, then programs and activities are going to be cut.  I’ve been hearing this same old tune for a long time and it never seems to change and the programs and activities always seem to grow and never diminish.

The ultimate question is where does all the money go?  Do you remember the director of the Red Cross here in San Diego whose salary was $400,000.00 per year?  You ever notice there is never an accounting made available of what the funds are for?  What’s the cost of the actual goods being sold?  Whose really benefiting from the proceeds?  How much of the proceeds actually ends up at the local level?  When did this become the children’s responsibility to do this?  How much free labor did these organizations just receive from us and our kids? 

I know a lot of you think I sound like a curmudgeon.  What put me over the top?  The schools sure do seem to send a lot of papers home with the children.  Usually, my wife reads all of these papers and I never looked at them until recently.  My eight year old daughter brings me a piece of paper saying I have to fill it out because she has to return it in the morning.  It’s an order form to buy books.  The schools’ and the teachers’ are now peddling books to the children through the classroom and I have to fill out a form saying yes or no.  Why can’t they read the books at the school?  Isn’t the library good enough?  Shouldn’t our taxes cover this?  Please don’t tell me some kid isn’t going to learn how to read if I don’t help out.

Do people question things anymore?  Are we all so busy in our own lives that we don’t notice the slow transformations that have taken place incrementally over time?  Are we all ever going to stand up and say no to some of this stuff or are we too afraid of conforming and keeping our mouths shut?  I sure have a lot more questions than answers.

I won’t slam the door in your face, but the answer will be a polite, “No.”

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