When I was small, my Dad objected to the serving of brussell sprouts at a meal. My Mom gave him the usual "there are starving kids in Africa" routine. He pushed away from the chair, got a mailer envelope from the other room, addressed it to "the Children of Africa", put the sprouts in question in the evelope, took them down the 1/4 mile long driveway, placed them in the red mailbox, raised the flag to alert the postman of their presence, came back and finished the part of the dinner that he liked.
See, the point was clear. It is completely insane to think that those same brussel sprouts could actually provide the needed nutrition in Africa. I have strived in my life to live by the rule of the sprout, aka "get real". It's all about perspective - where you sit in the world and how you see things. If you made a meal, you want people to eat it but if you don't like the meal, you probably would rather take a shot at shipping it to the 3rd world.
Let me try again. When I was 8, those same sprout loving parents took our family to live in Japan for a year. They generously decided to place me in an all Japanese school instead of the more comfortable Canadian Academy. I was mortified to be a 3rd grader placed in a first grade class - I was, after all, a caucasian giant among a sea of 45 small and tidy Japanese kids. I walked in and they laughed. Long story short, I had to walk a mile to take a train, transfer to another train then walk another mile to a school where I was the object of ridicule. It sounds like one of those "uphill both ways in snow up to here" stories but its true, totally true. The thing is that that time was the most important in my life. I learned that I could do anything. I learned Japanese in 6 weeks. Really! I made friends, I never got lost, I figured out how to steal money from my Mom's purse to buy some awesome candy on the way home. Oh - that's not the point though.
The point is that it's all about perspective. I believe that the drama with the hugs, the crocs, the tests, the bribery, this may just all be about me and my perspective. The kids are pretty darned excited to work toward a bouncy ball from the treasure chest. To me, the self-same chest pretty much represents all that is evil about our society. But lots of people weather worse storms and strangely, my kids don't seem like they are even in a storm - all is calm with them for the moment.
Somehow I may just have to figure out a way to look at all of this a little differently - a new perspective never hurt, at least not as much as brussel sprouts for dinner.
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