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sandersea · 1 year ago

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coach!neil au

i will (probably) never flesh this out further but please enjoy this au that has been living rent free in my head since 2016:

after the butcher cuts the tendons in Neil’s ankles, he laughs. he laughs as Neil crawls his way across the floor, already bloodied fingers leaving streak marks against the cement. no one laughs as Neil drags himself from the house, when he refuses any of the offered help.

the hospital sends him home in a wheelchair, and he refuses to leave the building until he’s shoved it down a flight of stairs. he’s only been out of surgery for twelve hours, only been out of bed for six, but he signs himself out AMA and orders them to give him a pair of crutches. sitting down in that wheelchair feels too much like he’s got a future there.

the FBI tells him he has twenty minutes with the foxes, and it takes him eleven of those to climb the single flight of stairs to their room. they tell him ‘starting now’ at the door, awkwardly, and he snarls in their face that he doesn’t need their pity.

it’s not Andrew who has him collapsing to his knees in the hotel room, but exhaustion. he faces the foxes the same way he first met them - doubled over, scrabbling for his dignity against the floor, fighting the urge to vomit. (this time Andrew is not the one who knocks him down, but he is the one who picks him up.)

the horror in their eyes isn’t just at the mess that is his face or his arms or the haunted look in his expression, but the way his legs are shaking, spasming, and even with the surgeries they just aren’t moving the way they’re supposed to.

the first week with the crutches, Neil’s legs collapse beneath him like a puppet with its strings cut. after that, he can’t get around without the wheelchair.

they still play the ravens in the finals, but they don’t have the fastest defenseman in division i anymore. they do, however, still have Neil. it’s Neil who notices the way Matt is limping. the way Riko is weaving through the backliners like they’re not even there. it’s Neil who makes the call to sub a few players out - Matt joins him on the bench. Kevin takes his place in front of the goal. they don’t have the fastest defenseman in division i anymore, but they have the best player in the country, and the man who knows riko’s moves better than anyone. they leave the foxes with barely anything in the way of offense, and focus entirely on defense. Kevin guards the goal like his life depends on it.

(it does.)

they don’t win the game, but they don’t lose. the buzzer sounds with the score still tied. Neil wheels himself to center court for the final shootout and gets as close to Riko as he can. Riko grins like he’s already won. he might not have orchestrated this injury, but it’s everything he could have wanted anyway. Neil grins in return, and throws the fact that Neil and Kevin and Jean belong to the main family now. that Riko can’t touch them without bringing his own brother’s wrath down on the nest like a bomb. that even if he wins this game, he’s lost everything. Riko turns on him, anger consuming rational thought, and raises his arm with the intention to kill.

(Andrew gets there first.)

the only thing that changes is that Neil never walks again.

the future he sold to Ichirou in exchange for his life never comes to be - instead, he pays off his debts as the new coach of the ravens (you said it yourself, Ichirou throws in his face as he all but throws him from the car. it’s been 14 months since the surgery but his legs still can’t support his weight. a professional player can make seven figures a year for my family. you turned the foxes into champions, now you will do it for the ravens.)

he says no.

Andrew says yes. (you are a fox, he says desperately against Neil’s neck, and I am still the man who is keeping you alive.)

the same team he is told to lead is the team that lost to him only weeks before. the team that tried and failed to break him at christmas. the team that stands kingless, toppled, teetering at the brink of total destruction. the team that resents him. the team that can’t respect him, the cripple who calls himself their new coach. the team that refuses to listen. the team that has been turned, brainwashed, the team that reacts to his humanity like a poison.

the only thing that keeps him in black and red is the way that it’s not just his life anymore - the deal was for the three of them, Neil and Kevin and Jean, and then Andrew offered himself as a fourth. it’s hardly the first time he’s walked into evermore for his family. (but this time, it may be the last.)

Andrew turns his back on his brother and cousin and every promise that tied him to south carolina and transfers to edgar allen, like he was originally meant to. it’s one final victory against Riko’s memory. (no one is surprised to see him leave. if anything, they’re surprised that he pretends to be reluctant about it.)

the following season the ravens play the foxes and it’s the most painful day of his life - he sends his team to the court opposite his family, and he knows a hundred different ways to exploit their weaknesses (he mentions none of them). the seven original foxes refuse to play (they’ve been telling him they were going to for weeks now. the one thing that doesn’t change is that he is still a fox, and they see each other at least once a week. talk once a day. it’s not the same). he has to wheel his way to the opposing team’s locker room that still feels like home and drag them back onto the court. they go, but they don’t play their best - all these times that Neil has thrown himself on a grenade for them, it’s all too easy for them to throw the game. it’s not USC who wins that year, but the ravens.

the next season it’s easier. they’ve got new players who never knew Riko’s regime, and older players who are coming to see that there’s just as much winning to be found with Neil’s way of thinking. it’s still never going to be home.

the next season, it’s not terrible anymore. the ravens are slowly learning how to play it as a game and not a battlefield, how to be humans again. they play the foxes and the foxes win. (the ravens don’t throw the game, but they act as leaderless. Neil still won’t coach them against his people)

the season after that, he thinks he might be enjoying himself. the ravens are allowed to study whatever they want now, to make friends. the ones who were there during Riko still act like they used to, but the younger players are happy. they don’t put on their uniforms like they’re going to war. they don’t fear death if they don’t win. (most of the time, they do win. Neil drives them through the same drills he learned as a raven, the ones he learned from Kevin, and he still reads the people around him like he’s living on the run. the saddest part is that he’s a hell of a coach, and that he genuinely enjoys what he does - he just wishes it was a different team he led.)

the original foxes have finally all graduated. Matt and Kevin and Andrew make court, and 70% of their earnings go directly into the Moriyama’s pockets. 86% of all of Neil’s graduates make it to the pros, and a portion of theirs come back as well.

Andrew signs with the West Virginia team. Matt does too. Dan takes over when Wymack retires, and she and Neil get together as often as they can to discuss their teams and the sport and their lives over lunch.

now when the foxes are seated across from the ravens at the banquets, there’s smiling and laughter. the foxes are still taken from broken homes and the ravens still practice longer hours than any other college team, but they’ve found a common friendship on the court. (and it helps, now, that Dan calls out the raven weaknesses as loudly as Neil does for the foxes. it’s impossible for their games to be anything but friendly when Neil wears an orange jersey that reads WILDS 01 and Dan wears the long forgotten black and red JOSTEN 04.)

evermore is the seat of the national team as well, and for a period of months every year he’s yelling at Kevin and Thea and Matt to haul their asses, he’s not here to watch them lose. the original foxes (and their spouses and children) splay across the seats in the raven lounge and make it feel more like home than it already does. Andrew makes the short drive from their apartment to the court like he does nearly every day, but this time to play instead of to sit beside the coach and offer unsolicited advice.

it’s nothing he ever wanted, but it’s still his life, and he’s still okay. the foxes are still his family and they’re still alive, they’re just a little bit farther away than he would have liked. he still spends the rest of his life in the sport he loves and he still makes a name for himself as one of the best, it’s just in a different position than he thought. he still has a home and two cats and a life with Andrew, it’s just in a different state.

even in this world where everything goes wrong, Neil does what he does best - he survives.

#my writing #aftg #aftg fanfic #aftg au #neil josten

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magalidragon · 4 years ago

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riding the waves | a Jonerys drabble

a/n: I don’t know where this came from. Perhaps it will be a bigger fic one day. Damn I miss the beach. And surfing. **cries**

The alarm was set to go off in the next fifteen minutes, but she beat it every single morning, body trained since she was twelve to be up before the sun. Hopping out of the tangled sheets, the windows and doors of the bungalow perpetually thrown open, she took in the morning breeze, salty and full of promise for the new day. She grinned, hearing the cresting of the waves, the battering of them against the beach just beyond the scrub grass and the sandy stretch beyond the open doors. Loose gauzy netting hung from the open doors and she pushed it back, to step onto the porch, and inhale those first few crisp breaths. She exhaled, eyes closed, and did a few sun salutations, opening her lungs and body to the day.

Kirimvose, she silently thanked Caraxes, Meraxes, and Gaelithox. God of the sea, Goddess of the sky, and God of fire, moon, stars, sun and the dawn, respectively. She bounced back up to her feet, hurrying into the bungalow. All of three rooms, it suited their purposes nicely; they were only ever in there long enough to sleep and half the time they slept out on the porch, beneath the stars anyway. Any other length of time spent inside was solely when it stormed or rained. Sometimes rarely then.

She pulled off the t-shirt she’d been sleeping in, tossing it into a pile on the floor with others. The house was a pigsty; she’d been meaning to clean but hadn’t gotten around to it. Too much to do on the outside. She tugged open the drawer of the single chest in their room and plucked out a pair of red bikini bottoms and one of her favorite rash guards, a black and red with her three-headed dragon symbol emblazoned on the back.

Once changed, she ran out, pausing long enough in the third room of their house to select the board she’d use that morning. Out of the corner of her eye, her feisty half-feral cat Drogon hissed at her, as she’d apparently chosen a board, he’d been planning on sleeping on. “Hush,” she chided him, ruffling his head on her way out. “Go find someone else to annoy.” He hopped off a board that was stretched over the table and went off to do just that.

She drove in her battered Jeep with the board sticking out the back with a few others to the beach nearest their house, choosing this one this morning because judging from the breeze, the waves, they would be hitting nicely off the reef and give her some good rides that morning. She grabbed the board and ran off, that first plunge into the sea waking her up, stinging her eyes and bringing her to her happy place.

In the ocean, a bit far from the shore, she sat on her board, lazily bobbing and glanced at the rising sun. She thanked the gods and goddesses again and then flattened herself, glancing over her shoulder when she saw the beginnings of a good wave. Here we go, she thought, excited for the first of the day. She began to paddle and then rose up on it, springing nimbly up onto the board, her core tight, body hunched, as it lifted her clear above the reef, the water, and almost into the sky itself.

It crested, several feet, and she rode it sideways, heart pumping against her ribs, laughing as she reached the end and rode the board lazily towards the beach. “Perfect!” she shouted, to no one. She rolled off into the water, grinning, and grabbed her board, paddling back out again.

An hour or so later, as she crashed off during a particularly nasty wave, she caught sight of another rider, annoyed. My beach, she scowled. Even though the beaches belonged to everyone. She tossed her wet braids over her shoulder, swimming back out, and waited, when she saw the blinding white board, with its red fins in the back. She smiled as he swam towards her. “Sȳz tubis issa jorrāelagon,” she greeted.

“Morning,” he replied. He sat up on his board. In the glow from the rising sun, he seemed to shine, somehow his skin retaining a paleness to it despite living full time in the heat and sun of the south. He’d pulled his dark curls into a bun at the nape of his neck, some tendrils free and stuck around his temples, sea water glistening on his dark beard. He glanced over his shoulder at the oncoming waves, smirking. “Race you?”

She scowled. “You’re on.”

They grabbed a couple of waves together; she was pleased that she beat him more than he did her. Even if she did wipe out on the last one, taking it too fast. She walked up onto the beach, board under her arm, as he came in after her. “Where’s Ghost?” she asked.

“Where else?’

They looked to the water and saw the white wolf-dog bobbing around, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, as he body-surfed in. She grinned. “Ghost the amazing surfing wolf!” she shouted, as he ran up onto the beach with them, dancing in the sand.

“I should get a few more pictures of him for that magazine.”

Ghost the Amazing Surfing Wolf, viral sensation for his videos and shots on a surfboard, who helped keep them in rent and surfboards. She grinned, leaning towards him. “The invitational is next week; I’m going to kick your arse.”

He nipped her lower lip. “No way.” He was considerably less competitive than her overall, very chill, but when it came to the both of them competing against each other, it could get downright vicious. He sighed hard. “Davos wants me to do the Ice Wave Challenge again.”

“You win that every year, it’s not so much a challenge.”

“No.” Very few people even bothered to try to surf the terrifying waves up off the coast of the North in the Shivering Sea. Mostly because it was so cold everyone ended up in the hospital with hypothermia, except him. He’d started trying to do it without a wetsuit, just to see if he could. He still won.

They looked around as more people started to pop up on the beach. A group of teenagers jumped out of a fancy Jeep with brand new surfboards and tags still on their wetsuits. One of them caught sight of her and shouted. “Are you Daenerys Targaryen?”

“No,” she lied.

“Yeah right! I know your silver hair! Ya’ know, you should have lost that last one, they only gave you high marks cause’ you’re a chick!” The kid had a punk face, sneering. He snorted. “I bet I can beat you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Joffrey!”

She glanced sideways at her boyfriend, who was hiding a smile behind his hand. “Alright Joffrey. Let’s go then.”

Several minutes later, Joffrey was eating sand and probably calling his mother to cry about how she destroyed him, and she was arm and arm with her better half, walking up to their respective cars. Ghost bounced along behind them, chasing lizards into the grass. “That was fun,” she announced.

A few other people saw them in the parking lot, locals and the like. Someone called out asking if they were Daenerys and Jon Snow. “Shouldn’t you be Jon Sand, living in Dorne?” someone asked him.

He chuckled. “Nope. Doesn’t work like that.”

They signed a couple autographs and then hopped in their Jeeps, heading back to the bungalow. She grabbed her board and began to work on it, waxing and checking the edges, while he whistled along and fed the animals. It was a good day, she figured, when she finished, and changed out of her suit into a pair of jean shorts and one of her favorite bikini tops, going to join him on the porch. He had his laptop open, was looking at video of the last invitational. She studied the video he was watching and pointed. “You came up too early there, lost speed.”

He rolled his eyes. “Thank you, you’re not my coach.”

“No, just better than you.”

“I mean, no comment,” he teased. She nudged the laptop away and sank into his lap, smacking a kiss on his lips. He sighed, cuddling her, and both looked out at the Sunset Sea stretching out before them. He idly brushed her drying silver curls over her shoulder. “You know you could always try the Ice Wave Challenge. Might give me some competition.”

“You know you don’t care about that.”

He grinned. “Nope.” He surfed because it was peaceful to him, as it was for her. Except she also did it because she liked to win. He sighed, glancing at Drogon taunting a poor lizard before he ate it. “We should get Drogon on a board.”

Ghost perked up at that, red eyes blinking curiously. Drogon hissed, grabbed the lizard, and pranced off, poker brush tail in the air. Dany laughed. “I don’t think so.”

“Hmm, worth a shot.”

After an hour or so of relaxing together, Dany got up, patting his knee. “Come on. The waves don’t wait for anyone.” She pulled off her shorts and jumped off the porch, deciding to hang around the house for a bit before they went to one of the bigger beaches, with an audience, and actually practiced.

Eventually, she ended up letting her board coast to the beach, his floating nearby, as they tangled up with each other in the water, letting it wash over them, and she kissed him like she had that first day she met him when she was thirteen years old on a family vacation, and both of them arguing over who could surf better. The kid from the North who had more sunscreen on him than was left in the bottle or the girl from Valyria who was born on the water.

Years later, they agreed it was a draw.

#jonerys #jonerys drabble #jonerys fluff #surfer!jonerys #my fics #my moodboards

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natferdinand · 4 years ago

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calamity-bean · 5 years ago

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Notes: Barkskins Q&A

Barkskins fans! Today (6/28/20), American Cinematheque hosted a Barkskins Q&A webinar with creator Elwood Reid and cast members Marcia Gay Harden (Mathilde Geffard), Christian Cooke (Rene Sel), and David Thewlis (Claude Trepagny). Elwood, Marcia, and Christian were on the call live, while David was interviewed beforehand and his responses recorded. Topics discussed included:

The show’s general scope and the adaptation process

Historical research

Accent coaching

Colonialism and the portrayal of First Nations characters/cultures

Sets and wardrobe

An audience question for Marcia about Mathilde’s daughter

An audience question for Christian about Rene’s physical/action scenes

Here I’m sharing a summary of the notes I took during the talk. This isn’t a transcript and I didn’t write down everything, but I tried to note interesting things as accurately as I was able. Please pardon any misinterpretations or errors; I did the best I could, but if you remember something differently (or have something to add), feel free to let me know.

This got quite long... Lots of notes below!

The Show in General

First, the big one: the show has not yet been renewed for a second season, but Elwood is hopeful! He feels like season 1 just barely “set the table” for the story, only to yank the tablecloth off right at the end, and he wants more seasons so that viewers can really dig into the meal. It was always planned as multi-season, and right now he’s just hoping that there’s been a good enough viewing and that people talk enough about the show.

The season was originally slated for ten episodes, but had to be cut to nine and then to eight due to the weather changing and due to the time necessary to construct sets.

The book was considered to be a huge challenge to adapt -- almost unadaptable. Initially, Elwood had ideas for doing a generational / time-skip structure like in the novel, where each season would start over and focus on a new time period; however, one of the main reasons he scrapped that idea was because of the cast. He really adores the whole cast and is excited to write more stories for these actors rather than switching focus to new characters.

In general, the show was repeatedly described as being essentially about “haves” versus “have-nots” -- who are the “haves,” who are the “have-nots,” what do they want and what are they willing to do in order to become a “have.” It is also a show in which every character (except Rene, initially) has a secret and everyone has something they want that they can’t have.

Also, things such as which characters live/die will not be beholden to what happens in the book.

Historical and Character Research

Marcia and Christian have both read the entire book. Since Mathilde wasn’t in the novel, Marcia called up Elwood with a lot of ideas for how to develop the character, although in the end Mathilde became someone much gravelly, crass, and more conniving than she had initially expected. Christian was very impressed by the scope and uniqueness of the story and found Rene’s simple worldview appealing, describing Rene as a man of the forest, a man of the land, with desires that are simple but meaningful and noble: a better life, prosperity, a piece of his own land.

David read about the first hundred pages, and his initial idea of Trepagny was as someone much tougher and more physically imposing, as portrayed in the book. He then had to work to shed that preconception of the character into the very different Trepagny of the script. He described Trepagny as a man of contradictions: Is he good or bad? Charming or obnoxious? Vulnerable or a bully? Does he live in a cabin or a mansion? Does he worship a god / dual god or a rotten old log? Is he delusional or is he a visionary?

Primary source materials from the period that Elwood used in his historical research include the accounts of Jesuit missionaries, business ledgers describing trade and commerce, and a few memoirs from filles du roi. However, he found it difficult to find primary sources, especially in English, and was careful to remember that these accounts always had a French/colonial bias.

Marcia did a LOT of research on her own in order to better understand what conditions in France might have driven the Geffards to leave. She asked herself, “Why the hell would anyone leave France to come to these mosquito-filled woods with ostensibly hostile First Nations people and English? What was going on in that moment BEFORE they came over?”

Christian didn’t do much historical research but rooted his character in terms of the physical research he did, such as learning woodcutting. He said Rene came from a rural area of northern France and was a woodsman there as well.

Accent Coaching

Marcia said they did receive accent coaching, but they didn’t want to lean too hard into strong accents because they wanted to give the impression that the French characters were speaking French, which, as their native language, would be very fluid. So it was okay to not have a heavy accent in order to better communicate that effect.

It was also okay for everyone to have different takes on the French accent, because they wanted to give the effect that these characters were coming from all different parts of France and each had their own individual background. They felt that communicating the characters was more important than getting the accents entirely correct.

They likewise had Native actors speak English on screen when their characters were talking among themselves (even when the characters should be understood as not speaking English) so that the audience would get that same impression of fluidity, cleverness, and colloquial conversation.

Colonialism: "Whose perspective are we bringing to bear? Whose story are we telling?”

Elwood acknowledged that Americans tend to be bad about looking outside their own history and that societies with a history of colonizing tend to come up with justifications for why it was okay for them to invade and colonize others. They wanted the show to avoid reinforcing that idea and to not sugarcoat the reality of it.

He mentioned the importance of having Migizi Pensoneau’s voice in the writer’s room. They also made an effort to speak with tribal communities and leaders in the area in order to gain their insight.

Elwood also hit on the effect of the Western film genre (as in cowboy Westerns) in shaping stereotypes about Native Americans and exporting these stereotypes to the rest of the world. Wanted to avoid those stereotypes (bc they’re inaccurate anyway and bc Barkskins takes place in the eastern part of the continent, not the western, and in an earlier time period) and in general to avoid portraying indigenous people as a uniform/interchangeable monoculture.

Marcia highlighted efforts to foreground First Nations characters in front of the camera as well, specifically mentioning Yvon and Mari. She mentioned that Yvon was educated at Harvard and that Mari’s father was French.

Sets and Wardrobe

This was my favorite section because I love this stuff and it was very impressive! Elwood basically gushed about how the production designer (Isabelle Guay), costume designer (Anna Terrazas), and wig maker were invaluable to the show. I tried to record the wig maker’s name, but I was going by ear, and I couldn’t find any search results that seemed right based on the spellings I tried. He was a Montreal area wig maker whose name sounded like (but I am sure is not spelled like) “Ray-jean For-jay.”

Isabelle Guay is local to the area and was in charge of building all the sets. She scouted all the areas personally and paid close attention to period details in construction. Authenticity was very important to Nat Geo; it had to look good and feel real.

Most of the costumes were not existing pieces that the show rented or reused; Anna Terrazas wanted to build as much as possible from scratch herself. She and the other costumers dyed deerskins, found period 17th- and 18th-century fabrics to make garments out of, and even hand built shoes.

Likewise, although it would have been cheaper to get okay-looking wigs premade, the wig maker wanted to make high-quality authentic ones himself. He flew to the actors, measured their heads, bought hair in France, and then constructed all the wigs himself.

Marcia on how the costume informed her character: Anna gave her a leather pouch to hang on a belt around her waist. It was filled with lavender, the idea being that Mathilde kept this lavender close to counter the foul smells of Wobik. Marcia viewed it as a “little secret” to draw on in her acting.

Christian found the costumes surprisingly comfortable/immersive and the landscape very awe-inspiring.

The moodboard for Trepagny’s wardrobe/aesthetic included pictures of Nick Cave and Jimi Hendrix.

Mathilde’s Daughter

Marcia was asked how much of the details about Mathilde’s daughter were of her own invention. She said that everything said on screen about Veronique was straight from the script, but she came up with more herself in order to inform her acting.

Marcia imagines that Veronique probably died from a sickness, perhaps something like whooping cough that to many of us today wouldn’t seem so serious but which would be more fatal in that era.

This is the point at which Elwood blindsided Marcia, me, and everybody else by talking about a scene he had been “obsessed” with a planned scene in which Renardette would go down to a room below the inn and find Veronique’s preserved body hidden down there, covered in her own dresses. Ultimately, Elwood felt that this was “too gothic” and that it wouldn’t work for Mathilde in a season of only 8 episodes, because it would too quickly take the audience’s understanding of her to a very bizarre/dark place.

He defended the idea by saying that it wasn’t uncommon at the time for people to do things like that, i.e. keep a loved one’s remains for a period of time. (I will take your word for it, Elwood. Also, I’m totally ready for you to go full gothic on this show, please follow your weird impulses in the future.) Marcia, though, felt that it wouldn’t make sense for a character as pragmatic as Mathilde. She pointed out that Francis is the one who wants things like refinements, whereas Mathilde is much more practical.

Also, I was today years old when I learned that Lola Reid (Renardette) is showrunner Elwood Reid’s daughter. In my defense, it’s not an uncommon last name.

Christian on Rene

Christian was asked about the physical aspects of playing Rene, such as chopping wood, fighting, swimming, etc., and which were most difficult and which most enjoyable. He said that he loved those aspects; he would get immersed in the physical act so much that he would forget he was acting. He could get very emotional in those intense moments and found it very difficult to come out of those scenes because of how emotionally charged they were (such as when watching character deaths) but also found it very enjoyable in a cathartic way.

Elwood said that he thought Christian had the hardest role because Rene is a stoic person who has to hold the screen with very few words. It was at this point that he talked about all the characters having secrets and something they want but can’t have; he pointed out that Rene is the only character who doesn’t have a secret and whose wants and needs are very simple. This makes his character “like a rock” that other characters try to pick up and bash around but can’t figure out what to do with.

In light of that, Elwood felt that this first season was a slow burn for Rene, but that the future focus of the character’s arc is essentially: What’s the breaking point of a man like that? What will make him crack? What will make him act out of his character?

He said it was also similar for James Bloor (Charles Duquet) because he had to take so much abuse in this first season, with Elwood assuring James that it was building toward a big future payoff.

In conclusion...

Aaand that’s all I’ve got! We are all encouraged to keep talking about the show and to make known our desire for a second season. Thanks for reading, and like I said, let me know if you have anything to add or to correct.

#barkskins #elwood reid #marcia gay harden #christian cooke #david thewlis #mathilde geffard #rene sel #claude trepagny #op #this is RIDDLED with little typos cause i typed very quickly i'll fix them later

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uniquequotesonlife · 5 years ago

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rhondastephens To Catch A Falling Cactus

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Parenting: Are We Getting a Raw Deal?

Summer 1974. I’m 9 years old. By 7:30 am, I’m up and out of the house, or if it’s Saturday I’m up and doing exactly what my father, Big Jerry, has told me to do. Might be raking, mowing, digging holes, or washing cars. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); Summer 2016. I’m tiptoeing out of the house, on my way to work, in an effort not to wake my children who will undoubtedly sleep until 11 am. They may complete a couple of the chores I’ve left in a list on the kitchen counter for them, or they may eat stale Cheez-its that were left in their rooms 3 days ago, in order to avoid the kitchen at all costs and “not see” the list. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); If you haven’t noticed, we’re getting a raw deal where this parenting gig is concerned. When did adults start caring whether or not their kids were safe, happy, or popular? I can assure you that Ginny and Big Jerry were not whiling away the hours wondering if my brother and I were fulfilled. Big Jerry was stoking the fires of his retirement savings and working, and working some more. Ginny was double bolting the door in order to keep us out of the house, and talking on the phone while she smoked a Kent. Meanwhile, we were three neighborhoods away, playing with some kids we’d never met, and we had crossed 2 major highways on bicycles with semi-flat tires to get there. Odds are, one of us had crashed at some point and was bleeding pretty impressively. No one cared. We were kids and if we weren’t acting as free labor, we were supposed to be out of the house and out of the way. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); My personal belief is that the same “woman with too little to do”, that decided it was necessary to give 4- year old guests a gift for coming to a birthday party, is the same loon who decided we were here to serve our kids and not the other way around. Think about it. As a kid, what was your costume for Halloween? If you were really lucky, your mom jabbed a pair of scissors in an old sheet, cut two eye holes, and you were a ghost. If her friend was coming over to frost her hair and showed up early, you got one eye hole cut and spent the next 45 minutes using a sharp stick to jab a second hole that was about two inches lower than its partner. I watched my cousin run directly into a parked car due to this very costume one year. He was still yelling, “Trick or Treat” as he slid down the rear quarter panel of a Buick, mildly concussed. When my son was 3 years old, we had a clown costume made by a seamstress, complete with pointy clown hat, and grease makeup. His grandmother spent more having that costume made than she did on my prom dress. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); At some point in the last 25 years, the tide shifted and the parents started getting the marginal cars and the cheap clothes while the kids live like rock stars. We spend enormous amounts of money on private instruction, the best sports gear money can buy, and adhere to psycho competition schedules. I’m as guilty as anyone. I’ve bought the $300 baseball bats with money that should have been invested in a retirement account, traveled from many an AAU basketball game, or travel baseball game, to a dance competition in the course of one day, and failed to even consider why. Remember Hank Aaron? He didn’t need a $300 bat to be great. Your kid isn’t going pro and neither is mine, but you are going to retire one day and dumpster diving isn’t for the elderly. My brother and I still laugh about how, when he played high school baseball, there was one good bat and the entire team used it. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); Remember your clothes in the 70’s? Despite my best efforts to block it out, I can still remember my desperate need to have a pair of authentic Converse shoes. Did I get them? Negative. Oh, was it a punch in the gut when my mother presented me with the Archdale knock-offs she found somewhere between my hometown and Greensboro. Trust me. They weren’t even close. Did I complain? Hell, no. I’m still alive, aren’t I? We’ve got an entire generation of kids spitting up on outfits that cost more than my monthly electric bill. There were no designer baby clothes when we were kids. Why? Because our parents weren’t crazy enough to spend $60 on an outfit for us to have explosive diarrhea in or vomit on. Our parents were focused on saving for their retirement and paying their house off. The real beauty of it is that none of these kids are going to score a job straight out of college that will allow them to pay for the necessities of life, brand new cars, and $150 jeans, so guess who’s going to be getting the phone call when they can’t make rent? Yep, we are. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); Think back; way, way back. Who cleaned the house and did the yard work when you were a kid? You did. In fact, that’s why some people had children. We were free labor. My mother served as supervisor for the indoor chores, and the house damn well better be spotless when my father came through the door at 5:35. The battle cry went something like this, “Oh, no! Your father will be home in 15 minutes! Get those toys put away nooooow!” The rest of our evening was spent getting up to turn the television on demand, and only to what Dad wanted to watch. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); On weekends Dad was in charge of outdoor work and if you were thirsty you drank out of the hose, because 2 minutes of air conditioning and a glass of water from the faucet might make you soft. Who does the housework and yardwork now? The cleaning lady that comes on Thursday, and the landscaping crew that comes every other Tuesday. Most teenage boys have never touched a mower, and if you asked my daughter to clean a toilet, she would come back with a four page paper on the various kinds of deadly bacteria present on toilet seats. Everyone is too busy doing stuff to take care of the stuff they already have. But don’t get confused, they aren’t working or anything crazy like that. Juggling school assignments, extracurricular activities, and spending our money could become stressful if they had to work. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); I don’t recall anyone being worried about my workload being stressful, or my mental health in general. Jerry and Ginny had grownup stuff to worry about. As teenagers, we managed our own social lives and school affairs. If Karen, while executing a hair flip, told me my new Rave perm made me look like shit and there was no way Kevin would ever go out with my scrawny ass, my mother wasn’t even going to know about it; much less call Karen’s mother and arrange a meeting where we could iron out our misunderstanding and take a selfie together. Additionally, no phone calls were ever made to any of my teachers or coaches. Ever. If we sat the bench, we sat the bench. Our dads were at work anyway. They only knew what we told them. I can’t even conceive of my dad leaving work to come watch a ballgame. If I made a 92.999 and got a B, I got a B. No thinly veiled threats were made and no money changed hands to get me that A. Ok, full disclosure, in my case we would be looking at an 84.9999. I was the poster child for underachievement. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); Back in our day, high school was a testing ground for life. We were learning to be adults under the semi-vigilant supervision of our parents. We had jobs because we wanted cars, and we wanted to be able to put gas in our cars, and wear Jordache jeans and Candies. Without jobs, we had Archdale sneakers and Wranglers, and borrowed our mother’s Chevrolet Caprice, affectionately known as the “land yacht”, on Friday night. No one, I mean, no one, got a new car. I was considered fairly lucky because my parents bought me a car at all. I use the term “car” loosely. If I tell you it was a red convertible and stop right here, you might think me special. I wasn’t. My car was a red MG Midget, possibly a ’74 and certainly a death trap. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); Look at your coffee table. Now imagine it having a steering wheel and driving it. I promise you, it’s bigger than my car was. The starter was bad, so after school I had the pleasure of popping the hood and using two screwdrivers to cross the solenoids or waiting for the football players to come out of the dressing room headed to practice. Those guys pushing my car while I popped the clutch, is a memory no 16-year old girl around here will ever have, and it’s a great one. Had I driven that car in high winds, it’s likely I would have ended up airborne, and there were probably some serious safety infractions committed the night I took 6 people in togas to a convenience store, but I wouldn’t go back and trade it out for a new 280Z, even if I had the chance. I was a challenging teenager, and in retrospect the fact that it was pretty impressive every time I made it home alive, may not have been an accident on the part of my parents. Go to the high school now. These kids are driving cars that grown men working 55 hours a week can’t afford, and they aren’t paying for them with their jobs. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); And those new cars don’t do a thing for telling a good story. I tell my kids all the time, the very best stories from my teen and college years involve Ann’s yellow Plymouth Duster with the “swirling dust” graphic, Randy’s Valiant with the broken gas gauge, and Carla’s burgundy Nissan that may or may not have had a complete floorboard. A story that starts, “Remember that time we were heading to the beach in Carla’s Nissan and your wallet fell through the floorboard onto the highway?” is so much more interesting than, “Remember that time we were going to the beach in your brand new SUV, filled up with gas that your parents paid for, and the…well, no, never mind. Nothing happened. We just drove down there.” To top it all off, most of them head off to college without a clue what it’s like to look for a job, apply for it, interview, and show up on time, as scheduled. If they have a job, it’s because someone owed their dad a favor…and then they work when it “fits their schedule”. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); We all love our kids, and we want to see them happy and fulfilled, but I fear we’re robbing them of the experiences that make life memorable and make them capable, responsible, confident adults. For the majority of us, the very nice things we had as teenagers, we purchased with money we earned after saving for some ungodly amount of time. Our children are given most everything, and sometimes I wonder whether it’s for them or to make us feel like good parents. The bottom line is that you never value something you were given, as much as something you worked for. There were lessons in our experiences, even though we didn’t know it at the time. All those high school cat fights, and battles with teachers we clashed with, were an opportunity for us to learn how to negotiate and how to compromise. It also taught us that the world isn’t fair. Sometimes people just don’t like you, and sometimes you’ll work your ass off and still get screwed. We left high school, problem solvers. I’m afraid our kids are leaving high school with mommy and daddy on speed dial. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); We just don’t have the cojones our parents had. We aren’t prepared to tell our kids that they won’t have it if they don’t work for it, because we can’t bear to see them go without and we can’t bear to see them fail. We’ve given them a whole lot of stuff; stuff that will break down, wear out, get lost, go out of style, and lose value. As parents, I suppose some of us feel pretty proud about how we’ve contributed in a material way to our kid’s popularity and paved an easy street for them. I don’t, and I know there are many of you that are just as frustrated by it as I am. I worry about what we’ve robbed them of, which I’ve listed below, in the process of giving them everything. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); Delayed gratification is a really good thing. It teaches you perseverance and how to determine the true value of something. Our kids don’t know a damn thing about delayed gratification. To them, delayed gratification is waiting for their phone to charge.Problem-solving skills and the ability to manage emotion are crucial life skills. Kids now have every problem solved for them. Good luck calling their college professor to argue about how they should have another shot at that final because they had two other finals to study for and were stressed. Don’t laugh, parents have tried it.Independence allows you to discover who you really are, instead of being what someone else expects you to be. It was something I craved. These kids have traded independence for new cars and Citizen jeans. They will live under someone’s thumb forever, if it means cool stuff. I would have lived in borderline condemned housing, and survived off of crackers and popsicles to maintain my independence. Oh wait, I actually did that. It pisses me off. You’re supposed to WANT to grow up and forge your way in the world; not live on someone else’s dime, under someone else’s rule, and too often these days, under someone else’s roof.Common sense is that little something extra that allows you to figure out which direction is north, how to put air in your tires, or the best route to take at a certain time of day to avoid traffic. You develop common sense by making mistakes and learning from them. It’s a skill best acquired in a setting where it’s safe to fail, and is only mastered by actually doing things for yourself. By micromanaging our kids all the time, we’re setting them up for a lifetime of cluelessness and ineptitude. At a certain age, that cluelessness becomes dangerous. I’ve seen women marry to avoid thinking for themselves, and for some it was the wisest course of action.Mental toughness is what allows a person to keep going despite everything going wrong. People with mental toughness are the ones who come out on top. They battle through job losses, difficult relationships, illness, and failure. It is a quality born from adversity. Adversity is a GOOD thing. It teaches you what you’re made of. It puts into practice the old saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. It’s life’s teacher. Our bubble-wrapped kids are so sheltered from adversity, I wonder how the mental health professionals will handle them all after the world chews them up and spits them out a few times. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); I know you are calling me names right now, and mentally listing all the reasons this doesn’t apply to you and your kid, but remember I’m including myself in this. My kids aren’t as bad as some, because I’m too poor and too lazy to indulge them beyond a certain point. And I’m certainly not saying that our parents did everything right. God knows all that second hand smoke I was exposed to, and those Sunday afternoon drives where Dad was drinking a Schlitz and I was standing on the front seat like a human projectile, were less than ideal; but I do think parents in the 70’s defined their roles in a way we never have.I worry that our kids are leaving home with more intellectual ability than we did, but without the life skills that will give them the success and independence that we’ve enjoyed. Then again, maybe it’s not parents that are getting the raw end of this deal after all. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({}); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJQP7kiw5Fk Watch: most watched video on youtube source Read the full article

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summernumber74 · 7 years ago

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“Summer No. 74″ — Day 1 — 1,674/50,000

Summer No. 51

With her unspectacular hands, Judy ran tape over her one large box. She required a second piece of tape to feel good about her box’s security, the first piece being crooked as God’s Own Word. Her room was hot and covered in a film of wrinkled tops. She herself was sweaty and indifferent to this summer’s hovel, the rent being agreeable in proportion to collapse. And she spent many weekends away, the next county over, coaching her mother for a forthcoming divorce. Five nights, two nights, five nights, two nights, three months of that for a cumulative 500 dollars in rent. So, if she was away enough, and the rent was good enough, why worry about being here? The bugs mostly stuck to the kitchen sink, and though the shower was half-eaten by some mystery mold, there was room for a huge bottle of 2-in-1 shampoo/body wash shared by 5 unhygienic hipsters. Judy and her roommates called it the Hot House, humid and life giving as it was.

And anyway her tenure here was three days away from being over. After hopscotching away a spring semester on couches, Judy found somewhere to move into mid-May. An unscrupulous landlord had rented the house, sight unseen, to a group of sorority girls back last August, each peeling off until the house was all subletters.

Judy flew open a trash bag that’d been on her bed and began stuffing it with her ugly provocative blouses. She intended to take most of her clothes to a donation center. She noticed they were stiff with sweat. She paused, shifted on her feet, looked out her door to the cluttered kitchen and the washer/dryer. She slid on her house flip-flops and dumped her load of clothes into the washer, which she often called “the warsh,” which was precisely correct. But, it often caused in her roommates a cruel useless delight.

The washer, reeking now of her clothes, shrieked it’s evil shriek; Judy winced and examined what was left. At this point, the kitchen was mostly stripped of use. What wasn’t discarded at Monday’s destruction party had been taken away for donation. Behold a summer’s remaining culinary treasures: a few plates, a coffeemaker crusted with grounds, a rice maker. The loveseat by the television, over in the corner, was Ken’s claim, and Dani said that the coffee table had always been hers anyway. Roommates at work, clutter uncluttered, Judy saw the house as a procession of junk stretching back several years, year after year a den of flunkies, the occasional Greek Life outpost, and now, soon then, five fools. This bed frame, that mug, this shower curtain. Judy saw them elongated backwards in time, always busted, always in new ways.

Approaching the front door, Judy threw on the jean jacket she’d taken from her mom’s closet a month ago. She buttoned it over her clump of a stomach (fuzzy), leaving HRT tits free to the world. On the porch she smoked several cigarettes, thought about what could get into her hair if she leaned back against the outside couch, threw a few horseshoes, and listened to the chimes next door. After so much difficulty, this peace, though lonely, was agreeable. She traced with her big toe a heart, and in the heart three lines suggesting a flame, in the dirt still damn from yesterday. Judy sang over and over her tune:

Shade shade shade I live in the shade Judy’d been singing it since June. The house got almost no natural light, shadowed as it was by trees. She liked that, she was piedmont all the way, and if she had to have a nervous breakdown this summer, well, she preferred an absence of the judgmental sun. After lunch (4 PM), Judy slept for a few hours. She dreamed often, this time of her mother’s husband with a pair of massive wings. In this one she caved his head in with her own humerus, painfully extracted with a pair of salad tongs. This dream was about as violent as anything else. She was horrified and bored with what her mind, in ugly fragments of sleep, gave her. Occasionally her dreams were suggestions of a beautiful future.

Through a hole in the limbs the sun illuminated the whole yard and porch. The situation at around 6:40 PM, though before it’d been 7, even 7:15. Judy withdrew to her room after quickly popping her head out. Paint flakes fell like pollen as Judy opened the old window, lit a cigarette and hunched out into the hot heat. The A/C chugged like a train, nearing it’s fifth death of the summer. Soon, she’d be back at her hometown, bored and belabored. No more waking up at noon, or crying in front of the gas station, or setting off fireworks in the clearing by the tracks. Misery! Her bare torso scraped against the wood of the windowsill, splinter lodged in her rib. “How overloaded. This window is a rotting Longinus,” Judy said aloud to her still empty house. She desperately needed her roommates. Or any sort of attention. Or any sort of company. Where was Marshall? She hadn’t heard from her in a few days. She spat outside, missing the dirt and putting a drag of spit on the house. Finally, restless to death, she went to pick up her last check.

She parked a few feet from the backdoor, barely missing a few plastic chairs reclaimed from the shuttered church’s Sunday School building just across the street. Right up against the building was an upturned metal basin with a flowerpot on top; The pot was filled with packing peanuts and a faux-plant made of faux-leather and parts from a rusted bicycle. Judy pulled on the door a few times. She wasn’t sure if it was stuck or locked. She yanked more until out burst the coziest looking lesbian you’d ever seen. “Hey Jud. It was stuck, so, I rammed it,” Kathleen said. For a while now she’d been sewing in shoulder pads to the floral sweatshirts she wore the whole year; “For the silhouette,” she’d explained. “Come on in. What’s got you around here?” Jeremy was filling boxes with t-shirts for all the Greek Life events next week, his headphones in and lips puckered in concentration. Judy waved at him, to no outcome. “I came to pick up my last check,” Judy said. Kathleen shuffled through a couple envelopes on the manager’s desk. “Yeah, uh, I haven’t seen Ricki since Saturday, I think she’s out of town? I think her mom’s sick. I was actually texting her earlier. She’s not going to be back until this Sunday. It must be serious. She didn’t say that but I figure it is. We could really use her, what with next week being Rush Week. Can you come back Sunday for your check? And, actually, can you work a couple more shifts? I mean I know you’re off the schedule, now, but, it’s not like you wouldn’t get paid. If you’re available. It’s just, with Rush Week, and then we’re getting a bunch of orders from student orgs and stuff, we’ve got at least one or two people here 20 hours a day. Someone from the Gwinnett branch is even coming in this weekend.” Kathleen scratched her jaw.

Judy pressed her heel into the concrete floor until her ankle was felt like a tight bag of stones. Jeremy throw a full box to the side. “Well, I’m out of here on Saturday morning, but, I can come back next week,” Judy said. “Did Ricki say she’d be back next week?” Judy could feel her face getting hot, the dried sweat making her feel sick. Kathleen, clearly tired, shrugged and said, “That’s what she said, yeah.” Kathleen grabbed a clipboard and said, “I’m gonna go check to see how the stock is. We’ve been printing all day and me and Jeremy will be here to midnight, probably. I haven’t even checked where we’re at with it.” She quick-walked through a heavy sliding door to the outbound garage.

Judy went to the bathroom to cry, more like hyperventilating. Her mind raced to nothing, no solution, nothing. She’d just have to come back. It’s nothing. It’s not a far drive. It’s a nice drive. She hated what it meant. Leaving and coming back. She felt like that was her life, leaving and coming back. If she left, she could submerge herself in her crappy hometown. If she came back, she’d be at someone else’s place, staying over, visiting, practically a tourist. She put the lid down on the toilet and let her legs shake for a few minutes and washed her face. She opened the door and snuck through towers of boxes to get behind Jeremy, still in his thing. She tickled his flanks, getting out of him a hoot that turned into a cackle. His face fell back into a solemn fashion model scowl. “Hey Judy. When’d you get here?” Judy cupped his cheeks and said, “Jeremy, you’re like a brother for me. You’re too pretty to be here. What are you doing?” They launched into a little dialogue they’d been doing for the last year. “You know, I was talking to Kathleen, she’s really stressed about all these orders. I think she’d really appreciate if you could do like, even an extra shift.” Judy rubbed his arm and said, “I’ll think about it. How is it for you? You seem like it’s okay.” Jeremy did this little eyebrow wiggle that meant ‘How could I do anything but make it look like I’m taking it in stride?’ Judy thanked god he didn’t go to college in New York or he’d be modeling now. She wanted more for him. “Okay, well, I’m gonna go say bye to Kat. Text me when y’all get off work, maybe we can do something,” Judy gave him a quick hug.

In the garage, Kathleen clopped around in her boots. “Judy! No one arranged these boxes, it’s a nightmare to check off.”

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uniquequotesonlife · 5 years ago

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rhondastephens To Catch A Falling Cactus

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Parenting: Are We Getting a Raw Deal?

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uniquequotesonlife · 5 years ago

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rhondastephens To Catch A Falling Cactus

Parenting: Are We Getting a Raw Deal?

Summer 1974. I’m 9 years old. By 7:30 am, I’m up and out of the house, or if it’s Saturday I’m up and doing exactly what my father, Big Jerry, has told me to do. Might be raking, mowing, digging holes, or washing cars. Summer 2016. I’m tiptoeing out of the house, on my way to work, in an effort not to wake my children who will undoubtedly sleep until 11 am. They may complete a couple of the chores I’ve left in a list on the kitchen counter for them, or they may eat stale Cheez-its that were left in their rooms 3 days ago, in order to avoid the kitchen at all costs and “not see” the list. If you haven’t noticed, we’re getting a raw deal where this parenting gig is concerned. When did adults start caring whether or not their kids were safe, happy, or popular? I can assure you that Ginny and Big Jerry were not whiling away the hours wondering if my brother and I were fulfilled. Big Jerry was stoking the fires of his retirement savings and working, and working some more. Ginny was double bolting the door in order to keep us out of the house, and talking on the phone while she smoked a Kent. Meanwhile, we were three neighborhoods away, playing with some kids we’d never met, and we had crossed 2 major highways on bicycles with semi-flat tires to get there. Odds are, one of us had crashed at some point and was bleeding pretty impressively. No one cared. We were kids and if we weren’t acting as free labor, we were supposed to be out of the house and out of the way. My personal belief is that the same “woman with too little to do”, that decided it was necessary to give 4- year old guests a gift for coming to a birthday party, is the same loon who decided we were here to serve our kids and not the other way around. Think about it. As a kid, what was your costume for Halloween? If you were really lucky, your mom jabbed a pair of scissors in an old sheet, cut two eye holes, and you were a ghost. If her friend was coming over to frost her hair and showed up early, you got one eye hole cut and spent the next 45 minutes using a sharp stick to jab a second hole that was about two inches lower than its partner. I watched my cousin run directly into a parked car due to this very costume one year. He was still yelling, “Trick or Treat” as he slid down the rear quarter panel of a Buick, mildly concussed. When my son was 3 years old, we had a clown costume made by a seamstress, complete with pointy clown hat, and grease makeup. His grandmother spent more having that costume made than she did on my prom dress. At some point in the last 25 years, the tide shifted and the parents started getting the marginal cars and the cheap clothes while the kids live like rock stars. We spend enormous amounts of money on private instruction, the best sports gear money can buy, and adhere to psycho competition schedules. I’m as guilty as anyone. I’ve bought the $300 baseball bats with money that should have been invested in a retirement account, traveled from many an AAU basketball game, or travel baseball game, to a dance competition in the course of one day, and failed to even consider why. Remember Hank Aaron? He didn’t need a $300 bat to be great. Your kid isn’t going pro and neither is mine, but you are going to retire one day and dumpster diving isn’t for the elderly. My brother and I still laugh about how, when he played high school baseball, there was one good bat and the entire team used it. Remember your clothes in the 70’s? Despite my best efforts to block it out, I can still remember my desperate need to have a pair of authentic Converse shoes. Did I get them? Negative. Oh, was it a punch in the gut when my mother presented me with the Archdale knock-offs she found somewhere between my hometown and Greensboro. Trust me. They weren’t even close. Did I complain? Hell, no. I’m still alive, aren’t I? We’ve got an entire generation of kids spitting up on outfits that cost more than my monthly electric bill. There were no designer baby clothes when we were kids. Why? Because our parents weren’t crazy enough to spend $60 on an outfit for us to have explosive diarrhea in or vomit on. Our parents were focused on saving for their retirement and paying their house off. The real beauty of it is that none of these kids are going to score a job straight out of college that will allow them to pay for the necessities of life, brand new cars, and $150 jeans, so guess who’s going to be getting the phone call when they can’t make rent? Yep, we are. Think back; way, way back. Who cleaned the house and did the yard work when you were a kid? You did. In fact, that’s why some people had children. We were free labor. My mother served as supervisor for the indoor chores, and the house damn well better be spotless when my father came through the door at 5:35. The battle cry went something like this, “Oh, no! Your father will be home in 15 minutes! Get those toys put away nooooow!” The rest of our evening was spent getting up to turn the television on demand, and only to what Dad wanted to watch. On weekends Dad was in charge of outdoor work and if you were thirsty you drank out of the hose, because 2 minutes of air conditioning and a glass of water from the faucet might make you soft. Who does the housework and yardwork now? The cleaning lady that comes on Thursday, and the landscaping crew that comes every other Tuesday. Most teenage boys have never touched a mower, and if you asked my daughter to clean a toilet, she would come back with a four page paper on the various kinds of deadly bacteria present on toilet seats. Everyone is too busy doing stuff to take care of the stuff they already have. But don’t get confused, they aren’t working or anything crazy like that. Juggling school assignments, extracurricular activities, and spending our money could become stressful if they had to work. I don’t recall anyone being worried about my workload being stressful, or my mental health in general. Jerry and Ginny had grownup stuff to worry about. As teenagers, we managed our own social lives and school affairs. If Karen, while executing a hair flip, told me my new Rave perm made me look like shit and there was no way Kevin would ever go out with my scrawny ass, my mother wasn’t even going to know about it; much less call Karen’s mother and arrange a meeting where we could iron out our misunderstanding and take a selfie together. Additionally, no phone calls were ever made to any of my teachers or coaches. Ever. If we sat the bench, we sat the bench. Our dads were at work anyway. They only knew what we told them. I can’t even conceive of my dad leaving work to come watch a ballgame. If I made a 92.999 and got a B, I got a B. No thinly veiled threats were made and no money changed hands to get me that A. Ok, full disclosure, in my case we would be looking at an 84.9999. I was the poster child for underachievement. Back in our day, high school was a testing ground for life. We were learning to be adults under the semi-vigilant supervision of our parents. We had jobs because we wanted cars, and we wanted to be able to put gas in our cars, and wear Jordache jeans and Candies. Without jobs, we had Archdale sneakers and Wranglers, and borrowed our mother’s Chevrolet Caprice, affectionately known as the “land yacht”, on Friday night. No one, I mean, no one, got a new car. I was considered fairly lucky because my parents bought me a car at all. I use the term “car” loosely. If I tell you it was a red convertible and stop right here, you might think me special. I wasn’t. My car was a red MG Midget, possibly a ’74 and certainly a death trap. Look at your coffee table. Now imagine it having a steering wheel and driving it. I promise you, it’s bigger than my car was. The starter was bad, so after school I had the pleasure of popping the hood and using two screwdrivers to cross the solenoids or waiting for the football players to come out of the dressing room headed to practice. Those guys pushing my car while I popped the clutch, is a memory no 16-year old girl around here will ever have, and it’s a great one. Had I driven that car in high winds, it’s likely I would have ended up airborne, and there were probably some serious safety infractions committed the night I took 6 people in togas to a convenience store, but I wouldn’t go back and trade it out for a new 280Z, even if I had the chance. I was a challenging teenager, and in retrospect the fact that it was pretty impressive every time I made it home alive, may not have been an accident on the part of my parents. Go to the high school now. These kids are driving cars that grown men working 55 hours a week can’t afford, and they aren’t paying for them with their jobs. And those new cars don’t do a thing for telling a good story. I tell my kids all the time, the very best stories from my teen and college years involve Ann’s yellow Plymouth Duster with the “swirling dust” graphic, Randy’s Valiant with the broken gas gauge, and Carla’s burgundy Nissan that may or may not have had a complete floorboard. A story that starts, “Remember that time we were heading to the beach in Carla’s Nissan and your wallet fell through the floorboard onto the highway?” is so much more interesting than, “Remember that time we were going to the beach in your brand new SUV, filled up with gas that your parents paid for, and the…well, no, never mind. Nothing happened. We just drove down there.” To top it all off, most of them head off to college without a clue what it’s like to look for a job, apply for it, interview, and show up on time, as scheduled. If they have a job, it’s because someone owed their dad a favor…and then they work when it “fits their schedule”. We all love our kids, and we want to see them happy and fulfilled, but I fear we’re robbing them of the experiences that make life memorable and make them capable, responsible, confident adults. For the majority of us, the very nice things we had as teenagers, we purchased with money we earned after saving for some ungodly amount of time. Our children are given most everything, and sometimes I wonder whether it’s for them or to make us feel like good parents. The bottom line is that you never value something you were given, as much as something you worked for. There were lessons in our experiences, even though we didn’t know it at the time. All those high school cat fights, and battles with teachers we clashed with, were an opportunity for us to learn how to negotiate and how to compromise. It also taught us that the world isn’t fair. Sometimes people just don’t like you, and sometimes you’ll work your ass off and still get screwed. We left high school, problem solvers. I’m afraid our kids are leaving high school with mommy and daddy on speed dial. We just don’t have the cojones our parents had. We aren’t prepared to tell our kids that they won’t have it if they don’t work for it, because we can’t bear to see them go without and we can’t bear to see them fail. We’ve given them a whole lot of stuff; stuff that will break down, wear out, get lost, go out of style, and lose value. As parents, I suppose some of us feel pretty proud about how we’ve contributed in a material way to our kid’s popularity and paved an easy street for them. I don’t, and I know there are many of you that are just as frustrated by it as I am. I worry about what we’ve robbed them of, which I’ve listed below, in the process of giving them everything. Delayed gratification is a really good thing. It teaches you perseverance and how to determine the true value of something. Our kids don’t know a damn thing about delayed gratification. To them, delayed gratification is waiting for their phone to charge.Problem-solving skills and the ability to manage emotion are crucial life skills. Kids now have every problem solved for them. Good luck calling their college professor to argue about how they should have another shot at that final because they had two other finals to study for and were stressed. Don’t laugh, parents have tried it.Independence allows you to discover who you really are, instead of being what someone else expects you to be. It was something I craved. These kids have traded independence for new cars and Citizen jeans. They will live under someone’s thumb forever, if it means cool stuff. I would have lived in borderline condemned housing, and survived off of crackers and popsicles to maintain my independence. Oh wait, I actually did that. It pisses me off. You’re supposed to WANT to grow up and forge your way in the world; not live on someone else’s dime, under someone else’s rule, and too often these days, under someone else’s roof.Common sense is that little something extra that allows you to figure out which direction is north, how to put air in your tires, or the best route to take at a certain time of day to avoid traffic. You develop common sense by making mistakes and learning from them. It’s a skill best acquired in a setting where it’s safe to fail, and is only mastered by actually doing things for yourself. By micromanaging our kids all the time, we’re setting them up for a lifetime of cluelessness and ineptitude. At a certain age, that cluelessness becomes dangerous. I’ve seen women marry to avoid thinking for themselves, and for some it was the wisest course of action.Mental toughness is what allows a person to keep going despite everything going wrong. People with mental toughness are the ones who come out on top. They battle through job losses, difficult relationships, illness, and failure. It is a quality born from adversity. Adversity is a GOOD thing. It teaches you what you’re made of. It puts into practice the old saying “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. It’s life’s teacher. Our bubble-wrapped kids are so sheltered from adversity, I wonder how the mental health professionals will handle them all after the world chews them up and spits them out a few times. I know you are calling me names right now, and mentally listing all the reasons this doesn’t apply to you and your kid, but remember I’m including myself in this. My kids aren’t as bad as some, because I’m too poor and too lazy to indulge them beyond a certain point. And I’m certainly not saying that our parents did everything right. God knows all that second hand smoke I was exposed to, and those Sunday afternoon drives where Dad was drinking a Schlitz and I was standing on the front seat like a human projectile, were less than ideal; but I do think parents in the 70’s defined their roles in a way we never have.I worry that our kids are leaving home with more intellectual ability than we did, but without the life skills that will give them the success and independence that we’ve enjoyed. Then again, maybe it’s not parents that are getting the raw end of this deal after all. source Read the full article

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