Truly random

Otw home, standing room only on the lovely nj transit bus. At least this driver maintains a reasonably smooth speed, some of these guys are nuts...

Anyways promised some random thoughts so here u go.

If you are proud of being chinese, black, jamaican, british its fine. But if you are proud of being white you are racist.

If a black guy calls another black guy the n-word, its a rap song or they are friends. If anyone else does it, it ends badly.

So son num 2 is grounded again. He is our prolific liar. When given the choice between telling the truth and fabricating, he will fib. Yesterday he was grounded for sitting in the tv room for an hour while mom was out walking one of the dogs. Seems innocent enough except the other two were standing at the patio door barking their brains out for that hour.

For that num 1 and num 2 get grounded. Now my boys want for nothing, I spoil the to ease my guilt at never being home, because I can, and because I enjoy making them happy. They each have a gamrboy so SOP for being grounded is to present the GB. Num 2 is yellintg from his rookm "I can't find it!". Finally my wife gets irritated and comes to help, low and behold he is in his room, sitting on the stairs looking around furiously for a place to hide the game boy he is holding in his hand.

I keep telling my boys, whatever you do wrong, lying makes it worse. Oldest gets it and doesn't lie, middle totally lost the concept, so my folllow up is: if you are going to lie, at least make it remotely possible that I will believe you...

I started talking about my oldest this morning and never finished, even though this blog is only 4 posts old, by now you are probably used to incomplete thoughts but this warrants completion.

My oldest has suffered through a lot of my growing pains. As I said earlier he was more like a little brother than my son. While it may be true that parenthood doesn't come with a manual, despite dr. Phils attempts, one pre-req should definately be that you be a mature adult. Note I said mature...just being a certain age isn't good enough. My older brother, by two years, has often been confused for the younger of the two of us for that same reason.

Anyways, I made most, if not all of my mistakes with num 1. Thank god for genetics because I still maintain that he is the most mature, smartest 13 year old I have ever met. I get frustrated with him, and all my boys when they give up on something. Just because its hard doesn't mean you can't do it, in fact once you have done it you feel that much better about having done it.

I try not to force my opinions, which being the analytical (funny how anal is part of that word) person that I am I can admit that most of my opinions are my fathers, onto my kids. I really want them to generate their own opinions about life. Some of them I quell as unhealthy (americans are stupid, can thank grandpa for that particular nugget) but I try and support their opinions and help them in defending those opinions by talking through them. Wow am I ever drifting...

I find most people are highly opinionated, but few people are educated in those opinions. Those are often the people who guard their opinions zealously, because they arte afraid to admit that they don't know why they think that way.

Back to num 1, before my bus ride is over, one critical mistake we made was putting him in french school when we moved back to quebec. He lost a year and developed a hatred for the language that took 6 years to recover from, if only partially. Since he is the senior child, all hus siblings hate french too, little do they know how good it is for them. I pity unilinguals, of any language. Knowing more languages opens up other possibilities and options that would be otherwise closed to you.

I tell them its important, and can hear my dad talking, so I add something he never did. "I know you don't believe me, I know you think I am old and clueless, but its my job to tell you this. And when you have your own kids, and are saying the same thing to them, you will be thinking what I am thinking, man I wish I had listened to dad. I'm also the only one here who has already been (age + 1), so MAYBE just MAYBE I know what I am talking about"

Hug someone close to you for no reason. Hold the door open for a stranger, help a lady with a stroller up the escalator, and seek balance by kicking a cat.

Miss you bunches babe, go easy on the boys, its almost as hard for them to not have me around as it is for you.