‘I’m Bored – The 21st Century Disease’

 ‘Mom, I’m bored! ‘

‘You don’t want to tell me you’re bored because I can find a lot of things to keep you busy!’

Kids today, most of us for that matter, are overstimulated.  My daughter makes ‘mini bead people, animals and flowers’ and bracelets out of colored string.  If she runs out of beads or string, we head over to Michaels with our 40% off coupon and get more.  She is on a swim team, plays softball, soccer and lacrosse, is writing a book, draws beautifully and creatively and makes miniatures out of Femo clay.  If our son is not fighting a war or creating a city on his XBox while talking to some kid in Germany doing the same thing, he is watching his favorite movie or sit-com, bike riding, having an air soft gun war, swimming or downloading songs onto his iPod.   They have weekly Youth Group and a bible study, swim meets and they taught Vacation Bible School at our church complete with planning stories, creating costumes and learning lines……how can they be bored??? 

Maybe my memory has dulled or I’ve idealized my free time as a child, but I can honestly say I don’t ever remember being bored.  We had no computer games or even a computer.  Only the government and IBM had computers and they were the size of small houses.  We had no color TV, no amazing range of channels, just the few we got with our ‘rabbit ears’.  We had no DVD’s or videos just a slide viewer and a record player.  I remember my mother telling me ‘go outside and play’ when I wanted to remain lost in a good book or in coloring one of my awesome Venus Paradise coloring sets.  I ‘built a windmill’ out of my neighbor’s garbage wood that he had put out for pick up, made ‘long braids’ by braiding my old tights and putting them on my head after being so inspired by ‘Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates’ that I wanted to be Dutch.  I rode my bike around the entire town and into the next, flipping a coin at each major intersection with my best friend “Heads we go right, tails we go left” and finally came home when the streetlights went on. 

Ingenuity has been stimulated right out of many of us, I guess.  I’m always stunned when I hear older people say ‘I’m in no hurry to retire, I don’t know what I’d do with all that time, except to be bored.” 

With the world at our very fingertips and all that time to learn, enjoy and experience and maybe give something back….. how about volunteering?

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Drill Our Own Oil? What For?

Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., proposed that we open U.S. waters between 50 and 200 miles off shore for drilling. The first 50 miles off shore would be left untouched.  

Amazing, that with gas prices already over $4 a gallon and climbing, that Peterson’s proposal was rejected by the House Subcommittee.  Maybe not so amazing when you have people ‘out front’ like Holly Binns, Environment Florida spokeswoman spouting her stupidity to the Media General news group that offshore drilling has no immediate impact on prices.  “It would take anywhere from seven to 10 years to bring those resources to shore — to have any measurable impact on supply,” Binns said. 

Now that’s looking ahead, Holly!  Does she think that if we continue in this vein that our energy problems will be solved in seven years?  If offshore oil production and exploration had not been banned by federal law in 1981, our dependence on foreign oil and the $4 plus per gallon gas prices might never have been the crippling problem it has now become. 

Enter Barak Hussein Obama stating “I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. The fact that this is such a shock to American pocketbooks is not a good thing.  …if we take some steps right now to help people make the adjustment, first of all by putting more money into their pockets, but also by encouraging the market to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly, particularly U.S. automakers, then I think ultimately, we can come out of this stronger and have a more efficient energy policy than we do right now.” 

What the heck is he saying??  Lots of words that mean nothing. 

Put money into our pockets?  Fat chance.  

‘Encourage the market’ to adapt to these new circumstances more quickly  (how are we supposed to do that?) particularly US automakers (are we all supposed to buy new cars now?) What is your average American supposed to do as gas and food prices increase out of control?  Salaries aren’t keeping up with the extra expenses we’re all enduring.

 

  

 

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A Day in Public School

My husband and I went to our daughter’s middle school as she was one of the students receiving The President’s Award for Educational Excellence, for students with a 3.5 GPA or higher. 

She was told to ‘dress appropriately’, whatever that means-different things to different people, I guess.  We saw everything from dresses with heels and suits with ties to cutoff shorts and sandals with t-shirts.  Does anyone know how to dress appropriately?  Maybe I’m old-fashioned but putting on a tie or a dress for an ‘occasion’ doesn’t seem too ‘over the top’ to me.  I know everything is so casual now but it makes me wonder if these kids will know how to dress for a job interview or what to wear to a wedding or funeral.

 

 

One of the names on the program was a girl in her class named ‘Satin’ which they had printed as ‘Satan’.  As we’ve had countless papers come home with the kids from school with various misspellings, the most recent being ‘infant morality’ intead of ‘infant mortality’, we weren’t totally surprised.   

 

Anyway, our daughter’s award had her last name misspelled.  Annoyed, she went in the next day and asked them to change it.

Then my son came home from high school with his ‘math student of the month’ award and his last name was misspelled.

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Sex Education in Public School

My 8th grade daughter came home yesterday and told me about her ‘sex education class’ at public school.
The following is what our 13-14 year olds are being taught about sex in school.

One half of all new HIV infections are among 15-19 year olds.
One in four teens have an STD.
One in two cases of STD’s are among people from 13-26 years old.
There are 5,000 reported cases of HIV in our county alone.
They were shown graphic photos of people with STD’s.

How STD’s are acquired:
• from mother to child in the womb
• sharing the razor or toothbrush of an infected person
• tattoos
• IV drug use
• oral sex
• ANY genital contact

My daughter’s class was told to ‘make sure you are ready’ if you want to have sex. If you can’t look at your partner with the lights on, you’re not ready. (What does that mean?)The teacher recommended abstaining from sex, but said if you’re going to have sex, use a latex condom because they offer the best protection. (When my daughter said that abstaining until you were married seemed to be the safest solution, the teacher admitted it was a good idea, but usually didn’t work.)
The boys (in a separate class) were given instructions on how to put on a condom.
The teacher told the class she gave her daughter condoms when she turned 12.

When I think back to what I remember of my sex education class in school, the only STD’s were syphilis and gonorrhea. We were taught the basics of how babies were ’made’ and how our bodies functioned. Birth control was barely mentioned, because 8th graders wouldn’t be having sex anytime soon. If they did, it was an aberration, not the norm. We were taught to respect ourselves and that we controlled what choices we made. We were not assumed to be out of control animals without intelligence and the ability to make good choices. When hormones raged, and they did, we didn’t immediately respond. Of course we were not without failure in our choices. We did have one pregnancy in our class of 800 seniors and 35 years later they are still married and are now grandparents. More was expected of us.

I suppose we should be grateful that our children are being informed about Sexually Transmitted Diseases at all.

Why not teach that abstinence is our goal? We are much more concerned with our children doing their best at sports. No one says to their child ‘There’s the goal. I will understand if you don’t reach it. No one really expects you to because it’s really hard to do. If you feel compelled to kick the ball toward it, go ahead but chances are you won’t reach it. And that’s OK.”
My Pastor compared this concept and giving children condoms to driving a car. Imagine saying to our kids ‘Here are the keys to the car, just in case you feel you want to drive it. You’ll know when you are ready. It’s right in the garage. No one really expects you to resist driving it. I know you don’t know much about driving and there is a one in four chance you’ll damage yourself for life or die horribly from your injuries but we have insurance and I’ll understand if you can’t help yourself.’

Why don’t we teach our children that we value and love them enough by encouraging them to set high standards for themselves? Why not place limits on one-on-one dating instead of letting them drive off into the night for hours with a person of the opposite sex? Why don’t we give our children a fighting chance when the consequences are life-long and life threatening?

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