Daily Prompt: Ghostwriter If you could have any author –living or dead – write your biography, who would you choose? Oooh, that’s a tough one. Either…
Tag: postaday
Daily Prompt: Playlist of the Week Tell us how your week went by putting together a playlist of five songs that represent it. Monday Spent Hunting…
Daily Prompt: Fantasy
The Tooth Fairy (or Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus . . .): a fun and harmless fiction, or a pointless justification for lying to children?
I am British, so the Easter Bunny never paid a call to our house, but the Tooth Fairy visited at night when our teeth fell out and Santa called at Christmas and filled our pillowcases. I perpetuated the latter two myths when my own children came along.
I don’t know why.
You see, all three examples here are not what I would call “fun and harmless fiction” – each encourages avarice in a child. That cannot be right – can it? Surely it is better to teach our children the joy of giving; to let them see that gifts come from people close to them and that those friends and relatives take pleasure in the gifting. How else are our offspring to learn to give, to give naturally, and give freely.
Not that I think they are “pointless justifications for lying to children” – frankly, that is a weird concept. Why would anybody seek justification for lying to a child.
I do believe that we need to be careful about being less than 100% truthful with our children. There are some big lies, like Santa, that are widespread and the truth will be assimilated in time, absorbed by osmosis almost. What of the other lies?
I’m not just thinking of vaccinations or the dentist and “this is not going to hurt” lies. There are the sex lies too – the stuff some adults make up rather than tell their kids the truth about what Mummies and Daddies get up to. The there are all the “cute” little stories that parents make up to explain a variety of potentially scary phenomena.
The fact of the matter is that adults are authority figures and children will naturally believe what they are told. Not only that, we teach them early in life that telling lies is wrong. They trust us. They trust us not to lie to them, because of what we have taught them. How on earth can we defend betraying that trust with any kind of lie, whether it’s an outrageous fiction or a little fib.
Those lies can come back to haunt – sometimes the adult, sometimes the child.
When I was very young, I think I would have been 4 or 5 years old, I was ill. Very ill. I can remember lying on the sofa in the front room, unable to lift my head The family GP came out to examine me. He sounded my chest with his stethoscope and took my temperature and shook his head sadly. “You have a very bad case of TV-itis” he said ” you have been watching far too much television...” We had recently acquired a set and I had been watching Watch With Mother as he arrived. Andy Pandy, in fact.
I was 13 when I told a neighbour that I once had TV-itis. She gave me ever such a queer look. I knew that something was wrong, but could not quite figure it. I reiterated that it had been the doctor’s diagnosis and she said, well, if you say so… It was only when I caught Flu when I was 16 that I realised – that was what had been wrong with me when I was small and that the doctor had lied. I felt such shame and embarrassment when I thought back to my 13 year old self. There were other embarrassments too – one in particular having to do with Thunder and clouds bumping together (thanks, Dad!) and a Physics class… oh, the shame of it.
You can’t go wrong with the truth – even if you need to simplify it or feed it in chunks as time progresses – but if you tell the truth from the start your child will never lose faith in you. Maybe, just maybe, if they know that Christmas Presents come from you and your hard-earned salary, they might grow up a little bit less acquisitive than otherwise. Be honest, clear and direct about sex and your daughter probably won’t present you with a grandchild when she’s under-age either.
So, mind what you tell your children, and make sure that if you do propagate the myth that it is you personally that debunks the myth in good time. Just let your conscience be your guide.
More on childhood myth
Today’s Daily Prompt has me somewhat stumped. We may have to state some assumptions.
Daily Prompt: Seven Days
You wake up tomorrow morning to find all your plans have been cancelled for the next seven days and $10,000 on your dresser. Tell us about your week.
Assumptions
- The money left is in usable currency – i.e. GBP, otherwise I’d have to spend most of the week in an attempt to exchange or bank the dollars – not an easy task for an island-dweller
- At today’s Exchange Rate, according to Google, $10,000 = £6,637.90
- Cancelled Plans = Normal routine events not happening. Not that I have many of those.
- Cash is available for 7 days only.
Friday, 8th March, 2013
Woke up this morning to find a stash of cash on the dressing table. I have no idea where it came from. Checked my email but found no notes from anybody on this matter. Did find email from Gill, to say that both Spinning Group and the School Knitting Group are cancelled for the next week… something to do with a broken heating system at the school.
How did it get there? I was mystified. Slowly the bad thoughts crept into my head.. how much money is in a pile of notes that high? OK. I counted it. Wouldn’t you? It was an odd amount. I counted it twice. Over £6,000… £6,637 in notes, and loose change amounting to 90p. Why?
I stashed the cash in the butter dish (the notes fit quite nicely) and put it on my desk. I can see it as I write this, the notes clearly visible through the Pyrex glass. I want to count it again. I really can’t believe what has happened. It is weird.
Spent the remainder of the day wondering whether to contact the Police – but what about, exactly. The money cannot be lost, it can only have been put there purposefully. So, we had a break-in? Do I get a copper out here from Mainland for me to complain that somebody broke in and left me over six, thousand quid? I might get sectioned.
But what do I do if I don’t call the Northern Constabulary?
Saturday, 9th March, 2013
Spent a very restless night last night. Got to thinking about the money and who it belongs to. Wondered if it had been left deliberately for me. I mean… has somebody given it to me, mine for the use of? Well, that started me off, playing “what if?” games!
I was at it for hours, getting all excited about the things I might do with 6K.
But it’s not mine, is it? It can’t be. I have never seen that much money in my life. Ever.
I’ll give it another day and see if anybody says anything about it.
Sunday, 10th March, 2013.
Mother’s Day today. Nothing for me, of course. D and V never bother and the thought of S doing something nice for Mothering Sunday is, well… not quite believable. He’d just scoff if I suggested going out for dinner. He sends his mum a card, that’s all.
There was nothing in my mailbox, and no phone messages. Perhaps I should give the Police a call after all.
Oh. *scream* Whatever should I do?
I am going to get my spinning wheel out and see if spinning for an hour or two will soothe my agitation.
Monday, 11th Match, 2013
Took a tenner from the butter dish last night and went down to Jean’s to buy a bottle of wine. I just could not settle to my spinning. My thoughts were too full of that damn money . Came home, put the change in the butter dish, then got pleasantly relaxed. After my third glass began to wonder what, if the money were mine, I might spend it on…
Spent 3 hours on Amazon, comparing digital camera specifications.
Mum’s birthday today. I wonder if she is still with us? She’ll be 86.
Tuesday, 12th March
Awake all night, alternately castigating self for avaricious thoughts and doing “let’s pretend” shopping, before settling on the notion of giving the cash to good cause if I cannot find its owner.
Spinning Group cancelled today, but I baked anyway. I needed the consolation of a good chocolate cake. Made Nigella’s storecupboard cake, using a jar of sour cherry jam. Delicious, but I ate far too much. Probably should not have had that tub of ice cream with it, either. Spun for two hours – got to thinking about that woolee winder that I want. Wonder if I might borrow £250 from the mystery stash.
Wednesday, 13th March
Rang Northern Constabulary this morning. I think the man that answered tried to stifle a laugh. The only advice he gave me was to bank the cash for safety – said there was nothing he could do unless I wanted to report a burglary but that burglars do not normally leave presents behind. Hung up, and then called and booked the bus for the ferry on Friday.
Not sure what to do now. My (Nationwide) branch is in Leeds, HO is in Ipswich and there is no branch closer than Inverness. I normally post cheques to Swindon, never had to pay cash in since we came here. Probably could have done a cash transfer yesterday when RBS came to the island… if had only thought on it.
I think I’ll open a new account with the RBS… keep this money separate from my own, just in case it has to go back… somewhere.
Thursday, 14th March, 2013
Beginning to think of the money as being mine to spend now. Quite ashamed of self but have had fun time deciding what to do with it.
Have settled on woolee winder and FinePix S4500 Camera (It’s RED!) and the rest to Red Nose Day – which is this Friday. Watched Richard Curtis‘ film Mary and Martha the other day on the BBC iPlayer; was very moved. Found myself wishing that I could do something to help beat that bastard disease, Malaria. Now I can. I find tears in my eyes at the very notion.
So, yes, if nobody has claimed the money by tomorrow, I am opening a bank account, doing some modest shopping on the old Interweb and donating the balance to Red Nose.
It feels like a good conclusion.
Dearest Diary, I am feeling very happy.
Friday 15th March, 2013.
Woke to alarm getting me out of bed in time for the bus. Grabbed coffee, rushed round getting ferry knitting, Kindle and ferry tickets together. Went to put cash in an envelope for safe-keeping en route and… the butterdish was empty.
I was stunned. Really had the wind removed from my sails. Literally took the legs from under me and I plumped into my chair. I swear that I literally gasped. All gone – the same way as it came. Have I been dreaming? Whose kind of a joke is this – to creep into my home and leave all that money and then come back and take it away again?
Will I never have a woolee winder. Thought it was too good to be true, I don’t get that lucky.
Went to town anyway. Called in at Police Station to report burglary. They took notes. I have the feeling that they tore them up again after I left. Funniest thing, though – they gave me a crime number – 6637/90. How oddly coincidental is that?
You can donate to Red Nose Day here. (I already did)
More writers being prompted today:
Daily Prompt: All Grown Up
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
Do we ever really grow up? I think that most of us are a little like Peter Pan at heart; our grown-up-ness is just a front. Who of us does not throw an occasional snowball, or splash in a puddle or kick a pile of autumn leaves about or wish that we had never learned that Santa is not real.
I know that I was never a Wendy; I made no attempt to be grown-up before my time.
? J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Did I feel grown-up on the day that I got married, maybe? I remember very little about that first wedding and most of it has to do with the voice in my head that said “this is a mistake, turn around and walk away…” I certainly behaved like a grown-up and I went through with it (and what a mistake that turned out to be!) No, I do not think that I felt grown-up – my parents were there and my mother was niggling at me about this, that and the other… all the things that I was doing wrong. I felt small and insignificant, not grown-up at all.
Surely, you might think, I was feeling grown-up the day that my daughter was born. I only recollect feeling numb, and nauseous.. and throwing up. I may have had an inkling of what grown-up feels like on the day that she first went to school but it was certainly fleeting, and lost behind nausea again (pregnant with #2)
The thing is, on a bad day, with maternal disapproval hanging over my head in the way that it does, I still feel like a small child; freshly spanked and sent to bed without tea. I have never really been permitted to grow up, not properly (see yesterday’s post.)
On a good day, I feel 17 inside. I often wonder how I could have possibly reached this stage (waiting for my bus pass to arrive) when I was actually only 17 a few days ago. I still have all that hope and expectation in me; I still believe that I can achieve anything I want to, anything at all. The world is my oyster.
I thought a dictionary definition might help in pursuing what is grown-up and therefore whether I have ever truly felt myself to be a grown-up:
grown-up
[grohn-uhp] adjective
1.having reached the age of maturity.2.characteristic of or suitable for adults: grown-up behavior; grown-up fiction.
Origin: 1625–35; adj. use of verb phrase grow upRelated forms:grown-up·ness, noun
OK. I got my vote in 1971. It did not make me feel grown up. Physically, I matured a few years previous to that. No, I did not feel grown-up (girl, you are a woman now.)
The second meaning in that definition may be our sticking point. In order to feel grown-up, it may be that we have to act grown-up. Can I recall a time when I behaved with all the dignity, responsibility and intelligence of a grown-up, hmm… I can recall being throwing-up drunk, that’s for sure. There were a few occasions of unprotected sex – that’s not at all grown-up, is it? I have no trouble in remembering occasions of casting all caution to the winds and spending the housekeeping money in a highly inappropriate and irresponsible manner…
I sense a theme.
My research also turned up this highly depressing quote (the emphasis is mine):
Adults come in all sizes, ages, and differing varieties of childishness, but as long as they have “responsibility” we recognize, often by the light gone out of their eyes, that they are what we call grownup.
Jules Feiffer
(Jesting aside, the full quotation is instructive and I have included it at the foot of this post.)
I am so depressed after reading that; I think I need a lie down.
We can accept that Responsibility and behave in a responsible manner, or we can be Peter-like and choose to have fun instead. To be childish. In truth, most individuals do not have the luxury of that choice. Responsibility is the ticking crocodile which, being in league with Time, is chasing all of us.
“Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you’ll never, never have to worry about grown up things again.
Never is an awfully long time.”
? J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Perhaps I did feel grown-up once; when I was parenting and earning a wage, and doing all the responsible things that parents must do. It was so long ago now that I seem to have forgotten what it was like. In time, I threw off the bondage of the office and ran away – if not to actual sea, at least to a wild island – and am having fun. I fill my days simply doing exactly what I feel like doing. So maybe I am not quite Peter, maybe I had my Wendy Phase and then reverted. That quote from Jules Feiffer seems to explain it quite well – though I cannot say that I regard Leisure as a Problem, more of a great Privilege. I intend to wring out of it every possible moment of childish glee that I can. We are, as they say, a long time dead. I have a lot to fit in before then. On the matter of Death itself – well, I am sticking with Peter:
To die would be an awfully big adventure.”
Adults have their defense against time; it is called “responsibility,” and once one assumes it he can transform his life into a set of routines which will account for all those hours when he is stale or tired. It is not size or age or childishness that separates children from adults. It is “responsibility.” Adults come in all sizes, ages, and differing varieties of childishness, but as long as they have “responsibility” we recognize, often by the light gone out of their eyes, that they are what we call grownup. When grownups cope with “responsibility” for enough number of years they are retired from it. They are given, in exchange, a “leisure problem.” They sit around with their “leisure problem” and try to figure out what to do with it. Sometimes they go crazy. Sometimes they get other jobs. Sometimes it gets too much for them and they die. They have been handed an undetermined future of nonresponsible time and they don’t know what to do about it. And that is precisely the way it is with children. Time is the everpresent factor in their lives. It passes slowly or fast, always against their best interests: good time is over in a minute; bad time takes forever. Short on “responsibility,” they are confronted with a “leisure problem.”
Read more at http://quotes.dictionary.com/author/jules+feiffer?page=1#52DUIUiq3l7DEYiT.99
More on Being Grown-up:
I enjoyed yesterday’s challenge post. While I was working out what I wanted to do I came across some more photographs that I think I…
With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson.
Daily Prompt: No, Thanks
Is there a place in the world you never want to visit? Where, and why not?
There was a time when I believed that travel was not for me. I had no wanderlust and really could not understand why, with all that Great Britain has to offer, anybody would need to travel abroad. There are still so many parts of the UK that I have not visited and would love to see but I did finally get myself a passport when I turned 40.
Not that the passport saw much use; mainly through economic considerations, I suppose.
My passport has timed out now and has not been renewed, but the small amount of travel that I have done has led me to wish that I might do more.
When I think of travel, it is always to temperate, cool, or downright chilly climes. All of the places that I long to see and explore are well outside of the tropics. I am not attracted by sun or sand; take me to Scandinavia, to Alaska, to the Antarctic, please. Offer me an all-expenses paid luxury trip to any destination in the world and my mind will not leap towards the sun unless led there in time, by other considerations.
The travel that I have done has taught me enough to know that I find Culture fascinating, and especially Food Culture. I think I would go anywhere if led by tales of sumptuous art, magnificent architecture,and splendiferous food! In other words, I would cope with the heat if I had to in order to explore the other facets of a country. My youthful claims of “I would never go to India/Africa/The Mediterranean/etc.” have been tempered by experience and age. Of course I would go – for short periods and if I only had the resources…
It would be madness not to! I would never (now) turn down any opportunity to travel anywhere at all.
In fact, I have mellowed so much with age that I would now even visit America. I think. The problem with America is, so far as I can see, that one has to pass through the bits that one would not want to visit, in order to reach those parts that one does. So, while I would never wish to see New York or LA, or any large centre, I can’t really, for example, get up in the Rockies without at least passing through a large airport.
Also, maybe, I don’t want to visit anywhere that brings out the snob in me… Yes, you know what is coming, please don’t take me to the Costas. Sun oil and chip oil and lager louts. Ugh.
Please don’t take me anywhere the Club 18-30 is staying, either.
If I travel, it is to meet the local people, eat the local food, have the local experiences. I want to stay in a small off-the-beaten-track establishment and not in a chain hotel. I do not want to go anywhere that caters for English tourists. I want to be forced to try my language skills out and improve them.
In general, my notion of travel is not about visiting a place. It is about the getting there. Travel as both Process and Product. I’m not one for rushing about, being squashed in a plane and bored to tears, hurrying to a single place where I am then indolent for two weeks. I would be happier taking a week to get somewhere and then simply turn about and travel home by the alternative route. Just pop me on a cross-Continental train, a whale-watching Arctic cruise, or a slow boat to China and arm me with a journal and a camera and I will be the happiest little traveller in the world. I could truthfully answer this prompt with a single word answer “nowhere” so long as I am simply passing through (and there is potable water.)
Having said all this, there is one travel experience that I shall never, ever repeat, and that is the bus trip that I took from Yorkshire to the Continental Christmas Markets of Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands. It was Hell on Earth. I won’t go, and you cannot make me!
(which brings us neatly around to closure.)
Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive – Stephen Fry
More writers on this prompt:
Daily Prompt: Places
Beach, mountain, forest, or somewhere else entirely?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJhq46ZpVbM
For me, any or all of those will suffice; so long as they are wild and empty spaces. Not for me the burning sun, oiled bodies, chilled beer and sun loungers. Cliff’s beach party would send me scurrying inland to the mountains.
As it happens, I have no choice nowadays; it is the beach or nothing, as our little island has no mountain, no trees, just miles of white sand and sweeping bays.
There have been other times, elsewhere. High mountain tops, long days in deep forests. I have loved them all because you were with me, dear, exploring the wild places. You and I alone, with the dogs and not a soul about to share it with. These are for you:
The Long Days Out
(i) Hunting for hidden treasure in the Forest of Dean
Long ago, one gold leaf
Covert in a russet tree –
You and I, seeking
(ii) Christmas Day on Cairn Daimh
Pie in the sky lunch –
solitary dining for
Mincemeat Mountaineers
(iv) In the forest by the sea, at Lossiemouth
Lossie forest, verdant
Have my cake and eat it too –
Hear the waves breaking