This morning on the bus, I listened to a father explain to his (I assume) five year old daughter the different ways she could spend the $20 he'd given her for the school book fair. He showed her pictures of hardcover books and paperbacks on his smartphone, and pointed out that if she chose a hardcover, she'd have the one book and nothing else. If she chose a paperback--the floppy kind, he called them--she could get lots of books. And almost before he had finished, she had said that she DEFINITELY wanted lots of books, the floppy kind. He may still have been talking, but her decision was clearly made.
I tell this story partly because it was very entertaining to watch, but mostly because it represented to me so many things about how we live these days. We give our five year olds twenty dollars and expect them to make spending choices. We check our smartphones to make sure we are up on school activities and to teach things to kids along the way. We teach our children the bus and train stops at such a young age that they are public transportation gurus by ten (which is good, I guess, because in NYC, by eleven, they are expected to travel to school alone). We--mothers and fathers--juggle the transport and the teaching and the general maintenance. The sharing might not be equal, but there is sharing. We have choices, and we give our children choices. We make sure we are everywhere (even when it feels as though we are everywhere and nowhere, all at the same time).
And we write about little things that feel like big things, and share what we write with hundreds--or thousands--of people. Because that is how we live.
No comments:
Post a Comment