My goodness, the generational gap between my childhood and theirs!
When my parents sent me to bed, they were pretty much assured I was going to bed. There was a possibility of a telephone, but the only telephone around was in the kitchen.
Escape was virtually impossible. It could have been done, of course, but the repercussions would have been dramatic.
As I put Jordan down tonight – as he pretended to go to bed – I knew that one thing was certain: he wasn’t going to bed. He was going to lie down, with lights out, until I left the room. And when I did, he was going to get up, quietly, inch over to his Mac, log on to his FaceBook, and begin the chat.
It’s not said with any type of judgment; it’s just a statement of fact. At what point do we simply realize that we have to allow life to evolve, with all of its manifestations, and realize that we do the best we can to create values along the way, hoping that our young offspring adapt those values to the ways that they are expressed today.
Original writing date: November 23, 2009