A Winter carnival (with a short treatise on childrearing)

First, a very happy birthday to my brother Calvin. He is home from Germany where he had been posted for 13 months.

This past weekend I went to a winter carnival in the town up the road. In honor of the Katrina victims their parade had a Mardi Gras theme. Picture this: I am standing on a patch of ice to see this small town parade and everyone is dressed up in Mardi Gras things over their winter coats. By the end of it I am wearing beads over my ski coat (no, I did not earn them). An especially memorable part of the parade would be some singing nuns called "the bad Habbits." I leave it to your own minds what they sung about.

In other news, we are still sleeping on an air mattress, but our real bed should be coming tomorrow. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I appear to be fully over my UTI, yeah and I am popping the cranberry pills like a drug addict.

Last night, Mr M and I watched the movie "Radio." I had never seen it before. Quick summary, Cuba Gooding Jr. plays a retarded guy and Ed Harris plays a football coach who takes an interest in him. One of my favorite actresses, Debra Winger, makes an appearance as well. Now I really enjoyed the movie, but it got me thinking about the way that people raise children.

Now I grew up in a neighborhood with some drug dealers and my brothers and I were very protective of each other and my brothers did not have a problem using fists. (Come to think of it, they still don't, but that is another story.) But all of us were also raised going to a nursing home every week and looking out for the weaker guy. When my brother, Calvin, was 7 and the best t-ball player on the team, he was adored by all the 5 year olds on the t-ball team. Calvin didn't think he was too cool for them, he encouraged them and played with them and helped them to became better ball players.

When my brother Paul was captain of the wrestling team in high school, he took an interest in the guys who weren't the best. Not only did he encourage them in wrestling, but life as well. He would get up extra early on Sundays and pick up Carl and take him to church and helped him with schoolwork.

When my family moved to Dallas, the church we attended has a woman (Mrs. Smith) in a wheelchair. My brothers and I didn't think anything about it and within the first 2 weeks, all three of us on our own had gone up and made her spoken to her without our parents saying anything about it. (We were all in junior high or younger).

But the real issue here is that this was all behavior that my parents encouraged. My mother later told me that she felt that she had succeed as a parent when Mrs. Smith told my mom that all 3 of us had gone up and spoken to her, and shown an interest in her without my parents saying a word. To paraphrase my mom, she knew a that point that all of us were caring. [Aside: yes, by becoming a nurse, I am not as nice as I once was, BUT I still do have a place in my heart for those truly in need, not the whinny drug abusers.]

Now to get back to the movie, there is a point when nine of the guys on the football team tie up the retarded kid and lock him in a shed. What horrified me about the scene was not that they did it (I do believe in total depravity), but that their parents would not see it as a big deal. That their parents were more concerned about them playing in games, GAMES, then they were about the moral development of their kids.

It horrifies me to walk though the malls of Dallas at times and see the parents with their children dressed to the hilt and hear the kids TELL the parents how they treated so and so at school that day. They have their kids volunteer at their favorite charity once a year and they got their lesson on kindness. Granted, this is a vast generalization, but when I have children, I hope to nurture a tender heart to those in need. Most people with the right help can raise a smart kid. But how many of us can raise a kind one?