Old Friends

One thing I think about more often than not is old friends. Where are they? What happened with their lives?

On the face of it, it would seem simple: Use Facebook to find them. Well, that doesn't work with my friends. One was a Jehovah's Witness, she definitely won't be using Facebook. Anyway, I know she married and don't know her married name.

The other one was a good friend for years. Since grade seven. Her ethnic background was Ukrainian, her last name difficult to spell. Until you got used to it. We did all kinds of things together.

I'm sure I won't find her again. Mostly because her philosophy was, "Never look back." So she probably has put me out of her mind totally by now.

I guess my point is that it's not always easy to look back, even when you have all the tools (computer) to do it efficiently. And since all my friends were girls, there's the chance of marriage and name change as mentioned above.

So I guess I'll just have to keep them as memories, there was one more, a girl I knew in elementary school. Good memories and maybe I will see them again some day. If I ever go back to BC - a big maybe.

But forgive me if once in a while I go looking for them online just on the off chance that they're there.

Parenting

I think something has happened to parenting. I'm talking about all the therapy little girls seem to need to feel beautiful. According to a commercial, all sorts of girls stop doing something they like because they don't like their body.

Now, if I had said to my Mom. "I'm not going to the beach because I hate my body." She would have said "Don't be silly. You look fine. Would you rather be like Miss Skinny Minny who can't even keep their bones warm."

What I'm saying is, when did parents let childish insecurities get in the way of their children's progress. The idea in the old days was to get the kid out having fun and they would forget their anguish. Well, I'm not saying that you shouldn't help your children through their fears, but why coddle them so much that they're afraid to live?

Besides, there's a lot of other things to build self-esteem on. Like learning the piano. And speaking of that, when did the blame for all this fall on show biz. Or fashion.

I have an opinion which I don't let out too much because I don't think many young women would appreciate it. Now, I have three nephews who have girlfriends and all three are raising children.

They are the most polite, the nicest kids. Their self-esteem is very high. Why? I'll give my opinion, in all three families, the parents can't wait to get up in the morning to be with their kids. They rush home from work to play with them. In two families, the women have chosen to stay home with their 'babies'.

To move on a bit. How many times do you see shows telling parents to get away from the kids for a romantic weekend. It makes me think that the difference and problem with self-esteem comes from the parents.

Your mother loves you the most, right? Well, suppose the person who loves you the most, doesn't want to be with you? How does that rate in a child's mind. "I'm not good enough, even my Mom doesn't want to be with me.' Maybe?

So in my opinion, I think you shouldn't have kids until you know that you want to spend so much time with them. All your time. Give them all sorts of attention. Do things with them, don't stick them in front of the TV. One of my nephews doesn't even have a television and no video games, they're always out hiking or mountain climbing.

So throw sticks at me if you want. Show biz is not to blame. Adults are.

Albanian Camping

I went to school with a myriad of ethic identities. There was African, Saudi Arabian and Iraqi to name a few. The person I remember most was the Albanian lady. I was fascinated by her tales of life in Albania, it's such a little known place that I couldn't help but be.

One of her best tales was the one about her camping. It seems all Albanian kids went to summer camps. There, they fished and swam, hiked and boated. They also learned how to use assault weapons.

She told me how they'd get up each morning and put their assault weapons together, then have breakfast and go for a morning hike. When they came back, it was off to the shooting range where they practiced killing Capitalists. Then lunch. Swimming. More shooting.

Supper followed by camp songs. Communist camp songs and before they went to bed, they'd take apart their weapons and clean them.

When I told my brother about this, he had a laughing fit. The image of children shooting at Capitalist was amusing to him. But it occurred to me that such a camp wouldn't be out of place in modern America.

Now I know that us Canadians don't really like handguns. But we do have a lot of rifles in the rural communities. But America is running a risk of being invaded. There's the terror threat from outside people plus the threat from home grown terrorists.

Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to teach young Americans, well, what the hell, Canadians, too, how to handle weapons safely, how to fire them, how to clean them. Mostly, how to be responsible. Because isn't the main problem with guns the people who aren't responsible and just use them as an inappropriate acting out prop.

We've just had a guy in Vancouver gunning a couple. Irresponsible.

Anyway, it's just a thought that maybe a fun way to learn responsible fire-arm handling wouldn't be amiss in a Capitalist country.