Books? -- TV -- Video Games - Tik Tok (unsocial nettwerk)?

I want to know was there ever a really big book reading audience?  How big was it? How big was the population (in the US) which read books regularly.  

In my life the local library always played a big role.  In both communities I lived in during the school year and in the summer regular trips to the library were a part of life, a fun place to go.  You could legally browse books. In fact that was the point

My children and I have kept up the tradition, our whole lives, ..... until my older

daughter reached puberty.  blah.  What happened?   Well? Maybe it is a natural progression???   

A hundred years ago Ernest Hemingway was a rock star.  Seriously.  His support acts were F Scott Fitzgerald and that Paris crowd.   They were really the sh... about town and the US.  

But by the 50s when Hemingway stopped publishing the golden age of Television had started.   Did TV really eclipse books?  Did everyone suddenly move over from books to watch television?  Or did the people who watched TV ever read books? Or did the people who read books stop reading books but also watched TV? Wasnt there, couldnt there have been space for both?   

Suddenly it started when I was growing up, this thing called video games came along.  I didnt get hooked because video games either cost a lot of quarters to play, that limited me usually to three games, or your parents had to buy you some little gameboy console as big as a big calculator.  I never got one.  I would have been addicted if I had had one. I spent a weekend at my cousins once and I couldnt get off their football gameboy game all weekend.  It was so wonderful.  

But did I stop reading books? Well I am not a good example. I couldnt get addicted because of lack of money, but NO, I did not stop reading books.  Other people could play video games endlessly.  By the 90s video games were serious time consumers and BIG, much bigger than when I was doing pac man in the 80s.  That s the time people who are fathers now spent their time as a nerd addicted to video games.   

Did the sale of books go down?   

Then we have to skip twenty years to the second decade of the 2000s, even mid 2010 - 2020 to see the next trend coming in.  Social networking and scrolling.  

Has social networks, scrolling networks, like Tik Tok permanently killed reading books which started dying from the onset of TV?   Are people still reading books? Or does the population have no cross over? In other words those who watch Tik Tok dont read books and vice versa.  

The problem is teenagers.  Teenagers start reading books.  Are they now lost to Tik tok?  I have to sadly add that while I only have anecdotal evidence which isnt worth much, my teen ager has stopped reading books.  Largely, I have to say, due to her addiction to Tik Tok and other short videos on internet. And still video games. 

You can blame me and say, well why dont you limit her phone, apps use?  Yes, I would have liked to and actually my wife did, but it didnt work. Our daughter usually found a way around the time limits.  Now all we can say is "time to shut it down."   "10pm, turn it off, time to get ready for bed." But it is self administered. Those people who say control it better.... it is difficult and there are other variables.  Ie, she can say she is doing homework.  Since a lot of the homework these days is done onliine, how can I doubt her?   So I cant take her phone away.  I wish we could put her on the app time limit.  But I am afraid to ask my wife to do that as she will just blow her top at me that we already tried that and I wasnt in favor of it or didnt care.  Which isnt true, I just was a bit oblivious at the time to the whole picture.  

Anyway, aside from that anecdote, I really want to know if the age group which

would be affected by all these new diversions, from TV to video games to apps, are they really leaving book reading? Were they ever there? Former president George W Bush never read books by his own account when he was growing up.  Or is the population always the same.  I am talking about teenagers now.  Or are they able to split their time properly between books and game addiction?    

These are the statistics, the charts I want to see.  For teenagers.   

Easter time.  Happy Easter. 

First I listened to an album just coming out at this time.  Its a cover of Slayer tracks done... slower.  I will get it for sale. And then when I was making corrections I listened to an old classic rock out. One of the best live Jams ever made.  Dark Star, on LIVE DEAD lp.  

15 year olds su... are not liked

 

Nobody likes 15 year olds.  A lot of people even hate them.  They still need help and guidance. 

When I was in my 20s and going to clubs with my mate, he told me a story that just happened.  He was sitting talking to a girl and finally he asked her how old she was and she said she was 15.  He ran away.  VERY quickly.  

Older people in clubs and meeting places dont like 15 year olds because they are dangerous.  Jailbait.  Stay away.  If you are a pedofile and like them, you still stay away from them. Pedofiles stay at home and just look at pictures, they dont often have physical contact, but you should not quote me on that (I am definitely not an expert on pedofiles).  Any and every male knows that the fastest way to get into trouble is to even walk within ten feet of a fifteen year old in a club.  "Can I buy you a drink?"   "Yes, sure but I cant drink, I am 15 years old"  "Fine, I ll get you a coca cola and I will never see you again," is the best answer.   Males in their twenties, unless you are R Kelley, stay away from mid teen girls.  Why are they even in clubs?  Well in Europe I guess they are allowed to be.  Or maybe all ages places, but if you are in your twenties, especially a male, but even a female, run away from them.  

Even older teenagers dont like 15 year olds.   If a couple older teen agers want to go to a coffee bar, but there are 15 year olds, they will say icily, "Lets not go there, there are 15 year olds there. I d rather stay away from them."  If 15 year olds frequent a place, all others stay away. Or sit on the other side of the room from them.  

And even kids younger than 15 stay away from them. "They think they are so cool, I dont want to go in there with them, lets stay away."  Nobody wants to be around them.  

15 year olds are on the cusp of both worlds and they mess it up in both of them.  They dont want to be kids anymore, but they dont understand what it is to be an adult.  They think they are adult or they want to be adults, but they are not. They are 15.   15 isnt even 17 and even 17 is young.  15 isnt 12 years old or even 13 and 13 used to be the age that girls could get married or "given away" in other traditonal societies.  But not anymore.  13 year olds have slipped back down to the pre teen group even though they are teen and 15 year olds have taken the place of the once marriageable 13 year old.  

But 15 is older than 13 and 13 year olds are young and small compared to 15 year olds.  15 year olds are bigger.  A lot of them CAN pass as adults if they watch some turd on instagram about how to put on make up and look older blah blah blah.   

And that is the problem.  

15 year olds want to get into being an adult.  So they will do anything, be more crazy, try to act way more mature than they are and just try to be what they think being an adult is.  But they dont know. And they mess it up. They go too far and they take it too far.  And that makes them dangerous, and everyone knows that except the 15 year olds. Stalkers and pedofiles know it.   The mid teenagers  just say to themselves, "I am an adult, I can do that."  But the thing is real adults wont do those things.  They will stop and think about what is being asked and ask themselves, "Do I really want to do that?  Should I be doing that?"   See 15 year olds dont ask themselves that question, they just dive into it and they think they are cool and adult like because they are going for it.  

But no.  

15 year olds are dangerous to others and to themselves.  Because the frontal cortex is not asking the questions, it is not assessing the risk.  It just runs in and jumps.  Usually off a very high building.  

If you have 15 year olds in your house, my take is that they still need coaching. They still need guidance from the parent, although they will not ask for it and they will hate the parent for offering it.  They need it.  You are going to have to bite your lip and tell them, that is not a good thing to be doing. I think you are going too far.  See, I know you are 15 and that is getting older, but it isnt there yet and you still need some guidance from us even though you dont want it. Sorry, sometimes we are going to say things you dont like and which will make you feel like you are a stupid kid, but yes, we have to tell you and instruct still, because, you are just 15 and we dont want you getting involved with R. Kelley and all the R. Kelleys who are still out there.    

Different perspectives : Present Me and Past Me.

 

Prefrontal Cortex

You might not know it but it is difficult to talk to my daughter and tell her she is making wrong decisions.  I have to step in often and help her make better decisions.   Let me map this out. 

The bad decisions stem from all the mayhem going on in the front part of her brain (see my two sides  of the coin from December 31st 2023 post).  This I know is happening because it is happening in all teen agers brains and even twenty something s brains.  Technically it doesnt stop till we are 26 years of age, but who knows, everyone is different.  

this is wrong

Anyway, my brain is done developing and I have no impulse decision making, nor "lets go for it" somewhat illogical temperaments.  Supposedly.   So I think it is fair to butt in to her affairs and tell her, "no that is not good, you really have to stop that and, no, doing that at your age is definitely not good".  I mean, come on, kids who smoke when they are 12... its a bit much.  And kids doing certain things at even 15 is too much too.  A fifteen year old girl can not get married without her parents consent.  There are just some (many) things that minors are not allowed to do, and for good reason.  

That is the law

This is me

When I see my daughter, I see her as young yet.  I think of songs with ages which she hasnt even hit yet, like "l saw her standing there" "you re 16", "I was just 17" by woman singer producer Pen Friend.... and others.  My daughter is just 15.  Not even close to most of the songs which still consider a girl young at 17, "Well she was just 17...".  She is just one year older than 14 which is really young. So when I hear about things my daughter is doing at her age, I say to myself AND to her, you cant do that stuff, you are too young.  No, not even drinking a full cup of coffee is good and I tell her I wish she would stay away from a cup of coffee let alone three a day.  Smoking, drinking, drugs, guns, sex, energy drinks, no none of them.  Too young.  Not good.  Not now.  Much later.  Much later.  Too young.  

Then I get myself into a problem.  I start to think of me when I was 15.  I was in 10th grade.  That was already pretty advanced and "old!.  Man, there were house parties every weekend somewhere. I wasnt really into that scene, but a lot of my classmates were and of course there was alcohol there.  I didnt smoke.  Cigarettes were for the burnouts. I knew it was bad and I didnt want to. BUT there was a group of burnouts smoking off of school propery down on the corner.  But I think everyone in the school thought the burnouts wouldnt go very far.  I grew apart from a good friend because he started smoking pot, geez, when were in sixth grade even. His brother smoked. So he got hooked.  By 15 there were weekend warrior types, even wake and bake kids.  Yes at 15.  I think 10th  graders thought they were pretty advanced..... and old enough.  

Now I am on the other side of the fence and I know it is totally hypocritical, but, they were too young.  We were too young for this stuff.   I know a lot of the kids who were into bad stuff didnt end up well. I am aware of two kids, one in my class and another an older brother of a friend, who committed suicide later on.  

I guess that is partly what it means to be a parent.  To have gotten older and be able to re assess our earlier perspectives with time and hopefully wisdom.  And as hypocritical as it is to say, no, that was not good what I did and I shouldnt have done it and I am going to tell you, nicely at first, but maybe more strictly later that no, you can not do this this or this.  Yes, you are too young.  Yes, I am going to nag you to not do it.  Yes, I want you home by midnight and no, you can not sleep over at a friends house because you have to come home and get good sleep.  And the list goes on, and yes it is a list.   

Me and bad younger me

So I have to say, "younger me, I am sorry, but I must rebuke you. Some of the things you did were wrong and I dont want my daughter repeating them at her age, hopefully not at all, but definitely not now.  So younger me, swallow your pride and stop remembering that you were so old, and knowledgeable because you werent."

Trying to catch on some bands that I either missed out on or are coming back after 30 years of disappearance.  

Duster is a slow core band I missed in the 90s which is getting its stuff re released right now.  

Slowdive was a shoegazer Brit band in the early 90s who is being asked for again by more and more people.  

Smoking Teenagers

 You know, I actually think the smart phones are the worst things for teenagers. I have written several posts on how they are terrible.  

But, what should be in the second place of terrible things for teenagers is all smoking and all types of cigarettes.  

Why after over 60 years of all the evidence of harm cigarette smoking causes do teenagers STILL want to try and start to smoke?  With all the details of the problems that will occur, I could ask why anyone would still smoke.  

1964 first Surgeon generals report on the dangers of smoking

I should say of course that I am not a doctor and I am not a psychologist so all opinions expressed in this post are my own and do not come by scientific method. However, many of my opinions are based on long standing scientific information and I am a good reader and you too can read and find out about from the scientific sources which have been scientifically tested. 

To look at it with no emotions, I would say there are a couple things which still push teenagers to smoke

1. The most important is probably peer pressure and social dynamics among teenagers.  In other words their immediate school and friend and non friend environment.  Teenagers are greatly influenced by their social environment.

2. Again because teenagers' (see my two sides of the coin post here) brains are developing and it causes them to make often bad decisions. Yet decisions which they want to make to push or test the waters of "allowability".  In other words they want to do things which werent allowable as kids but now they feel they are older and want to try them.  Bad or good.  The more taboo it was, the better.

3. Parents smoke so the kids see that and figure its ok for them to smoke. Now they are teenagers and nearly adults they should do adult things, or things they perceive as adult --- good or bad or whether it is good or bad for them doesnt matter.  

So now I have to connect this with my life. This is my journal.  But I have to think back to my youth and remember that my brother started smoking when he was 14ish and it was a great great disappointment to my parents whom neither smoked.  I think at the time it was not prohibited for parents to hit their kids and my father may have struck my brother for smoking or at the very least yelled hard at him.  My brother was much more difficult than my daughter, and my father probably had to be very strict and tough with him.  Still I wonder if a good discussion sitting down and talking about it wouldnt have been better.  My brother moved out soon after he was 16. I dont think my fathers' yelling worked. 

So here is my older teenage daughter who started to smoke.  I am very very disappointed.  And obviously my third point above that teenagers see their parents smoking doesnt apply. Neither my wife nor I smoke. My wife DID smoke when she was a late teenager, so actually, my daughter refers to that, which is the same thing as point three above.  So ... there it is. 

Still I couldnt hit her, I didnt even really yell at her.  I simply told her my feelings that I think it is a very very bad thing especially for her body at this time.  It does terrible things to the body especially now in her growing time and her brain too. And that I was very very disappointed with her smoking.  I did tell her that she was not allowed to smoke in the house.  On occasion or once a week I tell her that if she is still smoking I am very very sorry that she is and that she should know how bad it is for her.  Whether or not that impresses her or on the contrary eggs her on to keep smoking is a question.  Again, point 2 above.  Bad doesnt matter.  Trying "taboo" things is good.  And if they are recognized as things adults do, even better.  

I AM disappointed that she is smoking.  But I think that it shows that number

one, her environment, is stronger than parental guidance, or can be. Maybe her mother can dissuade her better than I can.  I am not sure hitting as perhaps my father did (though he probably wouldnt have hit a daughter) or even yelling is the answer.  Though I can not quite say that serious discussion works either.  

To tell you the truth I am kind of at a loss and just have resigned to riding it out and keep telling her that it is bad and I am disappointed. But again, maybe her mother can persuade her and she will stop at her stronger bidding.  

I really cant say how I would have reacted if I had had a son. Probably just the same.  

If you are a parent who smokes and see your kids starting to smoke you should really educate yourself on how really bad smoking is for teenagers growth.  Just when they need their body in really good working order while it is making a huge growth spurt in the brain and the body, smoking causes probably irrepairable damage in the body and brain.  For instance, while I dont have a link here and should, smoking can stunt your growth, for boys moreso, and you wont reach your full height.  Smoking stunts all and damages all your body's growth. As a result you wont reach as good an endpoint if you hadnt smoked. In other words you as a person in body and knowledge wont reach the same heights that was meant for you. You stunted them by smoking.  Might I add that if you can persuade your kids to hold off as long as possible until they are past their teenage years, it wont be "as bad" to smoke.  But the younger they start the worse off they will be.  

This I believe quite strongly. That smoking of all sorts is a huge damage to teenagers, to all people and society, but even more to teenagers.  

And yet I cannot sit by my teenager 24 hours a day and make sure she doesnt smoke. Nor can I hit her, "knock some sense into her" so to speak as maybe my father thought he was doing to my brother.  I am at a loss for something which will definitely make her stop smoking.  My only tactic is discussion, education and strong persuasion, and the hope that maybe my wife can do better.  None of which I am confident will work. 

When I wrote this post idea down in my book of ideas, I thought it would have some conclusion and I thought it would have another direction.  But now in writing I have gone in another direction and have come to no conclusion.   All I can say is maybe you know something that can work better or that like life it is a work in progress.  Some of it is bad and some is quite good.  I guess that is parenting overall.  

I hope the new year is still new and fresh for you.  Try to keep it fresh and not slide into a winter blues depression. It is quite cold out in many many places and other world issues are not being resolved. If you made new years resolutions push yourself not to drop them yet nor get frustrated with them.  Give yourself a kick to keep yourself going forward.  Dont lie down for a winter hibernation.  It is tempting when the weather is so cold. But do make sure you get enough sleep to fight all the winter sicknesses out there.  Best to you all. 

2 Goals for my post in 2024

 As a follower of Larry David in Curb Your Enthusiasm,  I know it is WAY past the date that I can wish anybody a happy new year.   All I want to do is acknowledge, and I think that is allowable, that it is a new year and I have a couple wishes for my blog for the new year.  I Dont call them Resolutions, but rather some goals I hope to achieve here in 2024. 

First, I want to continue my steadily increasing number of posts to get it to 24 for the year 2024 and have the second or third best year for number of posts since the early years.  If you can see how many posts I have every year, I had the most in my first full year of posting. It was still a lot for a couple years after that, but always a couple fewer. Until it went way down in the later teens down to the worst 3 for the year.  Geez what was wrong with me? 

One of the "good things" about covid was I got to writing again.  I got to writing more posts and since covid my posts per year has steadily gone up.  In 2023 I nearly got it to 2 a month to make it 24 for the year.  But I missed it.  For 2024 I want to hit that 24. 

You may think that is rather shallow, to write to reach a goal, but it is more like keeping myself going on the task.  My task has always been to document me taking care, or not taking care of, my daughters  as they grow up.  I have always thought that I did more than ordinary fathers and spent more time with them, but sometimes I did/do not. This might be one of those times as I am working in my store 5 or 6 days a week.  Still I want to document that.  It is like a public journal.  

In that sense also, as I have said at least 5 times, and recently, but want to say it again, my writing is not really to entertain. In fact many times my writing will be boring and uninteresting to you or any reader, but that is ok by me.  Because a journal is often boring and only interesting to the writer.  If you want to read, great. Again, it is a public journal.  I am not looking for numbers. I am aiming on documentation. 

In that respect I think it is better to keep the task going and write more to document more.   Twice a month is very reasonable.   So, my first goal and probably a goal to keep me going is to get 24 for the year, hopefully at least 2 a month. 

2.  To add 5 more meals to my repertoire of suppers I can cook that my daughters will eat. This is more difficult than it sounds as my younger daughter is a very finicky eater at this time in her life. I have every hope that she will be better when she gets older because as my older sister reminded me, she too had been a very picky eater when she was young but is eating now as an adult well enough.  Although she is nearly a vegetarian, she still eats meat and eats all the meals placed in front of her. So, I think my younger daughter will expand her tastes also. Just unfortunately for me, at this time, they are very limited.  

I dont know if limited is the right word.  Its not that she only sticks to a couple meals, its just that she doesnt like to eat a lot of things.  Lets see, green vegetables, carrots, mashed potatoes, but not cooked or baked potatoes or french fries.  Curried food.  She likes some Thai spice foods but not others.  She doesnt like any type of beans.  This makes it difficult for Mexican foods.  Although my wife has made a beanless chili con carne for her.  She doesnt like chick peas which I have recently discovered not to mention no cauliflower.  

My other daughter used to like my chicken wings, but not any more.  Neither of

them want to eat pork meat dishes.  That knocked my barbeque pork out of my repertoire.  My older daughter objects to me making any Thai or curry dishes because it is "not in my heritage".   

Both of them eat some but not other fruits.  One daughter eats bananas, the other not.  One watermelon the other no.  Like that. And to cap it off, one doesnt like dark chocolate, the other doesnt like white chocolate.  Go figger.  They will both claim that if they eat the chocolate they dont like they will throw up.   

So.  You want to talk about a daunting task.  

That said, I think there are some openings for meals.  Hey, give me a break if they arent the most exquisite of meals, but... give me some leeway.  

Sloppy Joes.  I have always wanted to do this meal.  I never really ate them when I was a kid although they were in my periphery vision.  They were always around. I am very good with the sauce for this meal, so I think it will be a simple thing to transfer my spaghetti sauce to a sloppy joe.  

Yes, some form of chili. I dont like to copy my wife, but in this case I have always wanted to make my own chili. My mother always made it and it was very good and she had no heritage for chili, and I really like chili so I would like to make it for the whole family.  

I have in fact added a couple of Thai dishes to my  own repertoire, like this one pictured, red curry chicken, but they were rejected by both my daughters.  agh.   I got these dishes from a cookbook written by an Austrian sportsman cook, so I dont agree that it has to be in my heritage for me to try.  Therefore I think there must be something I can make to my liking that has thai spices such as curry or ginger and noodles and can be liked by my daughters. But havent discovered it yet.  

There are a couple recipes sent to me by my sister she discovered in my mothers apartment in her recipe lists.  I remember the dishes and would like to re create them. I dont think all of them will be accepted by my daughters, especially the stuffed cabbage, but those will be more a pride thing to cook what my parents cooked and what I remember from my childhood and may or may not have liked.  I cant remember if I was thrilled with my moms stuffed cabbage, although by the time I was an adult I know I did like it.  

If I am lucky I ll get four new dishes from the above choices.  If not lucky... two.  

We ll see.   At any rate, I am up for the challenge.  If they dont like something but it is still good or made well, then it is still somewhat of a victory as a new meal for me to eat and a feather in my cap of cooking.  

I think these are reasonable and doable goals to have.  Sometimes the point is to not put the bar up so high so in fact it is easy to jump over it.  I am not one for making impossible goals, but rather possible goals.   

Over and out for 2024.   Please join me and read my blog when you can.   

Thank you

There is a new wave of deep house on the circuit.  On of my favorite labels for the new deep house who I think do a very good job of it is Bondage records. An awful name, but great music.  Of the bondage stuff I am deciding that one of the best artists on the roster is Marcus Homm.   

My younger daughter came to me with her list of music for studying and doing homework by and well, it was like McDonalds music. Tasty but without nutrients and not so great for the body.  The Bondage label and Marcus Homm is not empty easy listening calories.  There are so many good nutrients in this music.  So even if you just want passive background light listening OR you want to be an active listener, both are possible with Bondage and Marcus Homm s album "After Dark" 

Christmas : I get it. Two sides to the coin.

 It is really a 50 50 coin toss.  I am talking about my teenage daughter.  I mostly stay calm (unless it is a school night and it is after 11pm and she still isnt close to ready for bed. ).  I guess there are two sides to that coin.

On one side,  I dont get angry or am not terribly bothered by her behavior.  Basically she only thinks of herself.  And a lot of that is because of the development of the prefrontal cortex in the forebrain.  It controls your, "planning, prioritizing and  decision making" and is basically the little kid screaming "me me me" until it develops and is able to act rationally and make better decisions. Such as, it is not too good to just live on McDonalds and potato chips. Or, making the decision that you should really get better sleep than between 3.30 am and 1pm every day.  Granted it is Christmas vacation, but we should get back on a schedule that fits what you have to do.  Right now the cortex in the front is going haywire, from what I understand, and there is a lot of irrationality and anger even.  So, I try to stay calm and say, this is not how she will be when she is 23 or 26 years old.  It is the last section of the brain to mature. 

On the opposite side of the coin, it is in fact exactly what a parent should be doing by guiding that irrationality and trying to steer the person back into "safe" waters. In fact the parent has to be the one who says, "well living on potato chips and McDonalds is not really a good thing, even for a week".  We still have to say, "You are acting irrational and I think it would be best if we changed these things so you dont destroy yourself or become sick in some way and even stay healthy."   

N.Wallenda across Niagara

AND you have to do that without upsetting the irrational brain (the teenager) and make them run away screaming "I hate you telling me how and when to do everything.  Clean my room, do my homework, eat fruits, get to sleep on time, nag nag nag".   It is a tightrope wire  to walk.  

I got mad at my daughter before Christmas for something I really really was disgusted about and I yelled, "You go back and take care of it.  You have to know the difference or we have to teach you the difference between right and wrong and this is very wrong, so go back and fix it"  And she yelled at me as if I was the bad one for yelling at her.  But I couldnt take it lightly.  I had to make sure that she knew for sure this was a "wrong".  Also I didnt want people saying, "well it was the parents fault because they didnt teach her the difference between right and wrong". No siree Bob.  For the record, what she did was wrong and I told her so.  And she said, "yeah yeah yeah, I ll take care of it".  I hope she did.  

And another thing. 

When I got a really nice pair of pajamas for Christmas, I really needed them, I said, "thanks a lot GUYS (referring to both my daughters) for giving them to me. I really needed them and they are nice."   And in a minute my younger daughter asked me why I had said "guys" plural.  Oh.  It was just you who got them for me? My 12 year old.  My older daughter didnt get me anything.  She probably didnt get anybody anything.  Her mother gave her an electric guitar, I will give her a legal piercing when she wants it and I got her an MF DOOM LP.  It s not like she got coal in her stocking and her parents are the Grinch who stole (her) Christmas.  Christmas still came and she made out well but didnt contribute much herself, if anything to others.  

I get it though.  I am not upset.  Again, its her "me me me, I am the important one here" cortex brain in the lead thinking about herself and not others.  Sometimes even adults have problems thinking of others over themselves.  It is a tough case.  So she is a teen ager.  I got a nice pair of pajamas, I gave myself two CDs and a new pair of walking boots I needed for any more snow and a box of instant coffeees (from my worker) which I drink every day.  I really dont need much. I have everything and in more than enough amounts.  Its ok.  Seriously for the rest of the year I dont have to get myself anything (maybe one more pair of pants) and I can concentrate on disappearing my debt.   So, its ok daughter. 

Well.... sort of.  Mostly.  

I am a bit hurt to tell you the truth on the other side of the coin.  I mean even my worker got me a ten pack of instant coffee. It was a really nice gesture.  Couldnt my daughter have at least gotten me something small?  A big bag of potato chips or a chocolate bar?  Just some notice that she tried and she thought of me for five minutes and thought, "boy, he might like this."  I know she doesnt have much money (because if she has it she is buying herself McDonalds and potato chips) but I would have settled for a very small token gift even.   One day she could have forgone her potato chips and gotten her old man a small gift for Christmas.  

But I get it .... mostly.  She just isnt thinking of others right at this juncture.  I have to lightly guide her through and make comments and footnotes to her behavior and her lifestyle.  And Christmas is about the spirit and not about the gifts even if our modern world has made the giving of physical gifts the center of Christmas.   Its not.  

So there are two sides to the coin. And while one side may be the better and more rational, understanding and forgiving,  there is also the other side which is more hurt and a bit of pain.  

But, it will be better next year, or the year after that.  I m ok with it.  Mostly.  

Respect and Responsilbility for the new year  2024.  Hopefully more happiness and joy than pain and hurt.   But there will be all of them.   

These moments, few and far between

 It is great to have a teen age daughter when they arent complaining.  A couple moments happen once in a while when you just sit and listen and think, "wow, this is really nice".   I guess maybe it happens more when you get together after they are grown adults and you sit and have a coffee or breakfast with them, but that is after the times are gone. And that is probably once in six months if that.  

When you are all at home living together, there arent actually many moments when your teenagers will be sitting with you and talking to you. Maybe with Dad less.  Maybe with mom more.  I have had a couple when mom isnt at home and is away for the weekend. 

But two weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised when everyone was home and we were finishing dinner and it was just me and my teen age daugther and she suddenly had the urge to talk to me about every kid in her class.  She told me how she relates to every pupil and why they were friends or why they werent friends.  I found that very nice, to say the least. 

"What happened to your really good friend who slept over here a lot last spring?" I asked her.  

"Oh we had a falling out because she really thought I was doing crystal meth which I am not." 

Oh.  Um..... Well anyway it was really nice hearing about every student in her class.  I just sat there and listened quietly.  In fact I felt at peace.  

Its not that we dont have conversations, but in fact it is very difficult sometimes to get a teenager (daugther) to open up for a conversation.   Most of the time, it is more like "fine". "yes" "no, not really".  Or even the total anti conversation maker, "No, I am not going to discuss any of that. I dont want to"    

I guess mostly when I want to have a conversation, she doesnt.  She clams up and takes her meal to her bed or bugs me and looks at her telefon during dinner which is against the law here.  

I guess that is the answer which I have to abide by.  When she wants to have a conversation, she will open up and start talking.  I just have to play by her rules and let her pick her time for a conversation. If I want to talk over dinner, I might often not get it.  It is tough sometimes sitting quietly at dinner.  Dinner was always lively and loud when I was growing up and there was no end of conversation. I miss that.  But its not like I can force it upon them. I have to let them start speaking when they want to.  

(not my daughter)

If I start with a "how was school" and I get an "eh, it was ok" "boring", end of conversation, then that is what I have to accept.  I get it. I dont like the quiet, but thats that.  

To be totally contradictory, in fact as I was writing this post, my daughter came into the kitchen where I am writing. She has covid right now unfortunately, and mostly stays in bed.  But she had to get onto the conversation of some goods we got from a fairplay store or something like a goodwill store maybe.  I cant explain it. Anyway, there were these religious sayings on the goods and it creeped me out a bit. It felt like I let the 7th day adventists into my house to sell me goods and their goods did the talking instead of the people.  My daughter started yelling at me that religious sayings are on lots of stuff and I shouldnt be creeped out.  "Let there be light" is kind of a ubiquitous saying.  Still it made me feel uncomfortable.  And she got on me that i was anti educational.  How that got me tagged as anti educational is beyond me. I told her in half joking half real tone, "please go away". touche.   

i guess I cant always have my cake and eat it too.  These perfect conversations are few and far between.  

I was listening and reading about Husker Du all weekend again. One of my favorite all time bands.  This album first blew me away when I was 15.  Just..... whoa...  My teenage daughter is 15 now. I wonder if she will get blown away by an album this year.  Or something on Spotify,  Yeah right.