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Saturday, August 01, 2015

I Am Becoming My Parents! Oh! The Horror!

Jean Sexton muses:

Once upon a time, I promised myself that I would remain forever young in spirit, understanding of all youthful indiscretions, and exploring new ideas and concepts. For the most part, I think I have succeeded. Still sometimes I open my mouth and my parents' words fall out. Now, this isn't necessarily a bad thing as they frequently had words of wisdom. But still I hear myself sounding like them and it is a shock.

"Just pick it up and put it away." I have a bad habit of getting distracted and laying something down on a flat surface close at hand. Eventually things become cluttered and I need to have a round of cleaning. To this day I find myself muttering my mother's phrase. Remarkably, it still helps.

"Don't litter. Throw it in the trashcan." I find myself wondering about this on walks around the apartment complex. I wonder why people cannot put cigarette butts, empty drink bottles, used food wrappers, and (my pet peeve) chewing gum somewhere other than the ground. We share this earth; let's not litter it.

"The music today ..." As I look at my music collection, I see the genres of my parents: classical, Christmas, folk, and musicals (all with over 50 hours of music). Now, I have added some other genres and performers who are new (Lindsey Sterling, Peter Hollens, Pentatonix, Eben Brooks, and Wild Oats come to mind), but the majority are performers I heard as a child. Some of that is because I inherited my father's CD collection and Mom gave me a lot of musicals, but I added on to those. I suppose as long as I add on new people, then I haven't utterly stagnated.

"When I was that age ..." I do have to be careful of this one. There are so many choices for activities open to people today that weren't when I was young. Video games, smart phones, and computers all provide different avenues of communication and play. When I am in a restaurant and see people texting on their phones or playing games while their companion does the same, sometimes I cannot help but wonder if we will lose the ability to hold conversations with others.

There is one good thing to all of this; I don't get to use some of my "parentisms" on my dog. Well, if I do, he just grins his doggy grin and continues on his merry way. And when I find myself feeling as though I am stagnating, I use Facebook to connect with some of my younger friends, listen to something new on YouTube, or read something new to me. "Get out there and live your life." Oh no! It is my parents' instructions again.