Kids to Adults...Lost in Translation

A very random and somewhat classless thought occurred to me when I got home from work today. I was the first person home, well that’s not true, my oldest daughter had been home a great part of the day so let’s just say I was the first person home who thought the dogs would need to go outside since they hadn’t been out for several hours. I took them outside and the older, larger, smarter (but only because the younger, smaller, dumber dog has the IQ of a jar of paste) dog took about three steps to get all four legs in the grass and then proceeded to undertake the task for which I brought him outside in the first place. That is when two thoughts went through my mind. The first thought was I had been correct in my assumption that the eldest child had not taken the dogs out for quite a while as the number one undertaking (pun intended) proved a certain amount of canine leg crossing and dancing about had been taking place prior to my return home. The second thought and this is the not-so-classy bit I referred to earlier, is I should have been a tad more selfish and made absolutely sure I did not have to go myself before heading out into the back yard with the dogs as witnessing this process suddenly added a certain amount of urgency to my own world. Lesson learned.

Now on to our regularly scheduled column…

Last weekend I was an audience member for a dance recital. This featured dozens of children ranging from seventeen-years-old on down to learned-to-walk-about-twenty-minutes-before-curtain. Even though the older kids were much more adept at the actual dancing the tiny kids were my favorite. Most of them made it appear finding the beat of the songs to which they were dancing was harder to find than a shred of decency in a Goldman Sachs executive. They stood there watching the teacher go through the choreography. Some of them realized their task was to ape the movements of the bigger person, others randomly moved various body parts in an asynchronous manner and still others stood there transfixed, like a Precious Moments doll in headlights. It didn’t really matter though. Each and every one of them exuded a preternatural level of cuteness.

The auditorium had to have over three hundred people in it for what had been billed as a three hour dance recital. I am sure there were many people who remembered Gilligan’s group was just going on a three hour tour and ended up stuck for 98 episodes. I have to admit I snuck in my iPod in case the afternoon drug on just a bit too much because my own personal kid was part of the very first dance and then would not be on stage again until the second to last routine. I never resorted to my contraband entertainment because the kids had obviously worked very hard in preparation and they were truly fun to watch.

We are often told our most precious natural resource is our children and afternoons like this one bring that idea home to me. I like children, most days. The wonder the younger ones possess is so much fun to observe. They think things are cool. Why else would they constantly demand you look at each and everything they notice or do? “Daddy, look at me riding my tricycle!” “Daddy, look at that rainbow!” “Daddy, look at me smearing peanut butter all over the computer keyboard!” “Mommy, look at Daddy crying in the corner!”

Let’s look at other natural resources. Water is the very life of the planet and if you mix it with a certain granulated powder you have Surfin’ Berry Punch Kool-Aid. Gold is a shiny rock that by itself is somewhat pleasing to the eye but mine it, melt it and shape it and it becomes jewelry which has ruined many a young man’s bank account.

This ruining of natural resources is what I fear we do entirely too often with children. We have such a large supply of them in their raw state but then we don’t seem to know how to process them properly. Like oil there is great potential for usefulness in the world but then instead of carefully collecting and refining them we willy-nilly go about the process and then we’re surprised when there are suddenly hundreds of thousands of adults spewing all over the planet making a frightful mess of things.