2001-02-11 - 19:12 MST

February 11, 2001

Hard Knocks School

Once something is learned in the Hard Knocks School it stays in the memory while in use but sadly also follows the saying, "Use it or lose it."

Around 1954, somewhere in that time era our second daughter was four or five years old. She was working on being a person and so was slowpoke Bastion. To add to his problems, he was also trying to perfect himself in the art of fathering. Art, I said. A scientist can build something, but only an artist can make it a thing of beauty. I consider fathering the best kind of art, backed up by science.

There goes Siggy Freud again.

Bastion, being a child of the Great Depression (Big maybe, nothing great about it) I was raised and taught that my plate had to be clean enough to see my face in it - - - - back then mirrors hand't been invented yet I guess. So I went with the flow and swallowed the fact that the oldest, a boy, violently despised onions. A hard pill for this dad to swallow, because the rest of us loved them.

One night second daughter wouldn't eat her green beans and it was my idea that someone had sold her on the idea that green beans were yucky. So, big shot told her that she would sit at the table till she ate her green beans. Without a word the love sat there until her bedtime, dozing as she sat.

I was feeling pretty jerky and Heather bless her heart said, "You won't do that to one of my kids ever again." I finally learned to give another human some "slack."

Something I should have known early on. It helped me to dig up finally my forgotten hatred of green peas and my Mother's effort to find green peas that I liked, I guess she tried every deli in Denver. And finally without fanfare, green peas disappeared from our table -- no unpleasantness, just blessed "slack." Then the realization of just how cruel I had been hit me between the eyes - - - - - at last I had learned.

A little further down the tricky trail of fatherhood I was able to figure out somethings before damage was done. I learned to use "Benign Blindness," before any of our kids grew up with the can't win, can't out think anyone -- no fun in the sun anywhere. It occurred to me in a blinding flash of thought that my Dad must have been mentally one step ahead of me, having been through his boyhood a few years before me. I saw how predictable their actions were most of the time and then understood the principle of "Benign Blindess," old term, "Turning a blind eye," ignoring once in a while the act when I saw one or another doing something they knew was wrong. Oh, I watched out for their safety and it delighted me though when I could see the glee in their eyes when they thought old dad had been hoodwinked once again along with the knowledge that it couldn't be possible often."

Gee, my confidence level was growing. I made my mistakes, as few as possible. We learned to put the boundaries further and further out as they grew and began to be responsible for their actions. Heather dithered a bit, but gave in.

As a matter of civil courtesy our kids always told us who they would be with and where they would be, clear up 'til the time they married and moved away. We taught them that when they were playing with dolls and toy six guns. Only once did one of them lie to us about that. Grounding an active child worked wonders then.

Nowdays a time out is pretty ineffective -- the kid stomps to their room and uses all their toys to create a scene of destruction or goes to the computer and plays games. In recent times I have never seen a child put on a chair, in a corner long enough to serve as a punishment and warning.

Things are different nowadays, maybe even better. But it doesn't look like it to me when I see the news and notice the atrocious crimes the little ones commit.

I have been able to make my own school for the most part, but in the beginning, like every other Dad I think I had to attend the preliminary, Hard Knocks School . . ..

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