Wednesday, July 06, 2005

One Love and All of That

The Last Amazon has been emailing and calling me from Nana’s telling me how appalled she is because I have been slagging off blogging. Apparently, I am failing to keep up my end of the dialogue. For those of you who don’t know, I originally started to blog as a form of dialogue between my daughter and myself. The Last Amazon reads daily and then she emails her views. She has yet to comment in the comment section and prefers to list my shortcomings in private communication for which I am very grateful as she has an incredible intellect. I cannot envision a more humbling or humiliating experience than to publicly debate a newer improved version of oneself.

She seems to think that I should have a great deal of time now that I am down to only one child. The truth is; I am exhausted. I spent the weekend with a house full of boys between the ages of 12-13. I think Tipper is on to something here but her formula needs to factor in the ages of the boys as well. I had thought with Montana boxing during the weekday afternoons that I would have some relief from the boy factor but I failed to take into account that he finishes at 3:30pm which still gives him plenty of time to have his friends over.

I have never put a limit on the children having their friends over and my only rule has been that the house has to be spotless which means that they have to get to work. In the past this has usually bought me some allegedly private time during the week but the “man” has been keeping the house spotless, and now that his sister is not in the house, he has increased his circle of associates that he brings to the home. Apparently, he has issues dealing with the fact that some of his friends cannot control themselves from gawking at this “older” sister, The Last Amazon. He finds it too perverse to deal with. The only relief I have had was last night when Montana was at a birthday party at his friend’s house. I used that time to catch up on some much needed sleep.

In a conversation with the Last Amazon last night she wanted an update on the Check Point Charlie Monument and asked if the Berlin government actually went through with the bulldozing of the monument on the 4th of July. The answer can be found here. As the Last Amazon commented, strike Berlin off the list of cities to visit.

The Last Amazon asked if I had any ideas about what I wanted to blog about and I started to discuss with her a blog post that I first read here that was sparked by a blog post here. Now the Last Amazon is the product of an alleged “inter-racial” marriage. I have always had a problem with the term “inter-racial”, bi-racial, half-breed etc. It really sounds like my children were the result of sex with aliens or another species. I can’t get my head around the simple fact that most people cannot comprehend that there is only one species of homo sapiens. All the alleged “races” are just variations of the same theme. Culture and religion are valid divisions between people and I think one can make a valid case against wildly divergent cultures or religious convictions putting up barriers to potential martial happiness and therefore potentially providing a toxic environment for the raising of children.

But who knows, maybe I have spent too much time in Jamaica where every one is mixed unless you just got off the plane and you cannot count on the “white” looking people not having “black” looking parents. Hey, even Bob Marley’s father was white and I do not see how he had issues that resulted from being the product of an inter-racial union nor have I noticed that he was rejected by the “black” community because his father was white.

I decided to play devil’s advocate with her and tried to explain that he grew up dirt poor and was markedly different for his peers and his experiences of being different marked him in way that that was psychologically harmful therefore he reasoned that being a different colour from ones’ parents would be even more toxic to children who were the result of "inter-racial" marriages.

Anyway, The Last Amazon’s first off the cuff comment really put the whole issue to bed for me when she asked, “Is he talking about marrying your sister and having children with her? Because that’s just wrong. I don’t care what you say. It’s just wrong.” Her final comments were to remark on the ability of humans to live a long time and still be utterly clueless about life. Life is by nature unfair and if you seek fairness from the hand that life deals you, you will end your days old, bitter and probably alone -- and asked didn’t his parents teach him that life is never fair?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Don't tell me that 12-13 year-olds release more energy than 11-12 year-olds. At least I hope I won't feel so guilty next year and indulge him with so many over at the same time. I think two over is manageable. But past that all heck breaks loose.

Hope your other two are enjoying their change of pace.