I see Slashdot is celebrating its tenth anniversary. That gave me pause to reflect on an artifact from my life ten years ago, which for various reasons I’ve been re-reading recently.
It’s called Stone Cold 97, and I suppose you could say it was my first foray into blogging. Actually it was a collaboration between my father and myself, on the subject of drugs. I hadn’t heard the term “blog” at that time, nor did I have any handy blogging software. Dad sent his entries to me via e-mail and I posted them online manually. The comments also came via e-mail and I had to add them manually too. You kids today don’t know how easy you got it, with your automated blogware.
There’s quite a bit of text there, but if you’ve got some time to kill, you might find it interesting.
Wow! Powerful. Frightening. Great timing for me. The parent/adult child thing is way more difficult than anyone who has not or is not going through it can imagine it to be. You are right, it’s not about drugs. When you are in the position of the adult child, you believe that you will never, never have a serious disagreement with your child, when s/he is an adult. You are determined that you will recognize it’s their life, their choices. And besides, you know that you are such an open-minded person, it just won’t be as hard for you. I think we all believe that at some point. I suspect the teens who first watched “Rebel Without A Cause”, knew their generation would be different. Naive. We all, Christians, Humanists, Pagans, whatever, have certain core beliefs. Frequently, we don’t even realize we do until our adult children challenge them. I laughed when I found out my 18 yo sons were getting drunk every night in Ireland. I’m just that kind of understanding mom. I cried when I found out my 19yo foster son had joined the Army. If he had called me before he signed up and it was too late, I would have done everything in my power to stop him. It’s his life? Fuck that! He’s heading to war! See, we all have those core believes that trip us up, and interrupt our consideration that it really, really is their life.
B, you’re dad’s my hero.