Monday, 26 January 2009
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Hobbits and Parenthood
This afternoon, I headed up the Teen Book Club at my local branch of the library.
Our librarian was nice enough to provide some delectable refreshments, so I was able to draw in about four or five kids, other than myself. I started the meeting by introducing the books I'd selected for the next two-week period. I had decided to split the group in two: middle school and high school. I picked a book for each: The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien for the younglings, and Thr3e by Ted Dekker for my peers.
The meeting proceeded much as you'd expect: I read aloud the synopsis of each book, and we, as a group, read the first chapters, passing the novels around the circle to read in turn.
So...
After I finished reading a selection from the Hobbit, which is most emphatically a kids' book, I was approached by a whelp of no more than six or seven. Wide-eyed, she inquired, "Are you a teacher?" I couldn't help but laugh, not just because of the fact that I'm not even half-way through high-school. This little encounter brought to mind a few things.
First of all, I can't wait to have kids. Lately, I've been looking at the diminutive side of humanity in a new light...I've been seeing them as a pleasant future, rather than a lost past. People tell me I'm good with kids...I guess that's a little bit true. But it's not because I have any leadership ability or anything of that nature. It's because I'm young enough to be amused by what amuses them, but old enough to know what crosses the behavioral line. I don't know about you, but I think some of the most ridiculous things are hilarious. Thus, I get along with children. I laugh at their jokes. I play their games. I sing their songs.
Hell, I LOVE playing Bus Driver. It's beast.
Another thing this little affair inspired was memories of my childhood...the good ol' days when I was Fun-sized. Heh. I can see why the kid might have been unable to distinguish me from her teachers...when I was her age, any Post-pubescent human was an adult. I couldn't tell the difference between my teachers and the omnipotent high-school students. Age was irrelevant. Maybe it's just because of the time that's elapsed, but when I look back at my little-kid life, I see only a haze of confusion and bliss. It was great.
Maybe the reason we love children is because it takes us back to where we want to be: the innocence and simple thought we've forgotten. Maybe the reason we long to parent children is because we long for the glimpse of the things we've lost.
I can't wait to read to my kids.
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Comments (4)
Yes...and then you get even older and you begin to realize that child birth cost money and some inshurence companies will pay for A and C but not B. * GGRRR* You look all the stuff you need to get and then you look at how much money you bring in and tally that up with how old you are and how much time you have left befor the door begins to shut. It makes you want to curl up in a little and cry or beat your head aginst the wall but you cant figure out what to do first. That is where i am at. i'm 28, not married, not through collage and working part time at a retail store. i feel more like i'm 21 than 28 and i look like i'm 23. I cant get over the fact that i am getting older. i think mid life crisis is hitting me 20 years eairly.
@sailer_mel -
:(
I think whenever you look at anything in the big picture perspective, it ruins it. Take life in general. We're born. We get six years of doing whatever we want, most or all of which we're too young to appreciate. Then the process of education begins. We work hard for twelve or more years to finish high school, just knowing that things will get better once we graduate. Once we finish high school, we hit college. The work load intensifies. We have to start being adults. We work hard to finish college, knowing that if we can get a good career, we'll be great...life will be dandy. So we finish college and whatever grad school we may or may not decide on. Then comes the career. We work hard to provide for our families, knowing that if we can improve our status in the company and make more money, everything will be wonderful. We work until we retire, and by the time we're there, most of us are too old and weak to really enjoy life the way we want to. Then we die.
Life's too short to live for the future, so I'm not going to worry about it. I don't want to squelch the happiness I have right now by looking at the big picture.
I've lived a lot of my relatively short life just waiting for the next day. I've lived the week to get to the weekends and the school year to get to the summer.
Life's only worth living if it's worth living NOW...it's certainly not going to get better.
This is the one who got second at the poetry contest a while ago. Accept me as a friend kay?
@SanguinarySephora - accepted