Bird Droppings May 1, 2012

How old do you have to be?

On most mornings I sit and use others words to build on and to assist in providing me with fodder for thought. As I sat today with graduation here at our high school only weeks away a thought struck me and seemingly took a direction of its own. I received an email just a short note from a parent about their child who likes history and is ten years old and the note is asking the question: How old should he be before I tell him about the Holocaust? I was getting a bottle of Smart water it seems I am spoiled when it comes to bottled water and they do taste different in case anyone asks however I am told Smart water increases IQ. Maybe that is what I should tell my students help me keep what little I have as I get older sounds better. Something about distilled water and the adding electrolytes or is it the French springs in the Alps and all that. Actually I started drinking this particular water because a liter bottle fits in a car drink holder. At the Quick Trip the fellow in front of me was buying a mountain dew and the cashier asked for ID which surprised me since when is caffeine is being checked I asked picking on the morning cashier and then a pack of cigarettes was visible behind the bottle of dew.

I was getting into some deep thinking over the past few days about the development of understanding as I worked on a paper and one of my thoughts was at what age do we stop using our instincts. A baby is born with instinctual behaviors nothing is needed to bring them out such as a Babinski reflex, when you touch the bottom of the baby’s foot and the toes curl and most people as adults will still do that as well. Another is the sucking reflex, without it a baby would perish. Along with these instinctual responses children begin to learn right away for example a baby learns to cry when hungry and finds the chances of being fed are great. Cry to get a dry diaper in reality the baby is not thinking and plotting as first time parents think after a night or two these are learned behaviors simply antecedent behavior and consequence ABC it is simple Skinnerian psychology although the parents are the lab rats.

But what happens in the days ahead when a child experiences and learns behaviors? I was thinking and borrowing from Marianne Klein psychoanalyst and author as she uses the word phantasy, which looks weird and doesn’t spell check well so I will use fantasy as a starting point. Most kids live in imagination as they progress from that learned behavior at a young age into more bits and pieces of “the real world” as their perception changes. They experience and learn and soon what was one thing becomes another and imagination begins to lose ground to opinion. We form an opinion about something based on our perception.

Fifty people said that grey thing is a possum that is lying alongside the road so I shall call it a possum too rather than a rat. Until that point it was a big furry roadside rat that always is asleep alongside roads. One day you learn the term road kill and your perception changes again and experiences kick in and ideas. As we work our way through this developmental process there are overlaps and under laps and periods of time that go quicker for some and slower and excruciating for others. We eventually get to point of understanding where it all makes sense and that could be seventeen or eighteen or like me past sixty or so if I have yet gotten to that point.

Then I get to questions again. At what is it the right age to let your daughter date or your child drive a car? At what age should you let a child have alcohol or smoke or be medicated for ADHD or some other psychotropic issuance? When will a child understand the principles that founded this country of freedom and liberty and democracy? How old do you have to be in order to join the military and die for your country? How old is old enough? My father in law got into the service at age sixteen as he looked old enough and then served nearly fifty five years between the Air Force and Civil Service, working on C130 aircraft for The Air Force. A good friend of mine from high school was nineteen when he died a few days from going home in Viet Nam.

How old do you have to be to go look up friends on the Viet Nam Memorial wall in Washington or receive a knock on the door and a complimentary flag when your son or daughter does not come home? How old should a child be when they can vote and choose on their own who will represent them? I ran into a former local state legislator at the bank back in the fall and he was resigning. It seems he was leaving to go back to the pulpit in North Georgia after a scandal involving a former nonprofit employer has multiply federal indictments against officers of the company and this former legislator had sponsored several bills favoring this large nonprofit. Was this fellow reelected numerous times because he was doing a good job or no one else is old enough to run? How old do you have to be?

How old do you have to be to learn to read or learn a foreign language? I learned years ago we have language acquisition factor till three or four years of age and children can learn languages many of them at the same time with ease. Can you be six or seven or is that too old to still learn? How old do you have to be to be potty trained? My brother John was in his thirties when he died and he never had been potty trained. How old to you have to be? I remember one time going into a convenience store and a fellow who worked for me asked me to get him some beer. I was in my forties at the time and did not have my license on me and was not allowed to buy the beer by the cashier. My friend had to go back in and is seemed funny to me I could pay the fifty dollars for diesel for the truck but not the six dollars for the beer. How old do you have to be? Actually it made me feel pretty good getting carded at forty plus and for the first time ever.

I see children dying on the roads around us driving a hundred miles an hour into a telephone pole and the then the crosses and flowers are erected and memorials are put in windows. That really made me think how old do you have to be to get a window sticker of a reminder of your death in a tree going around a corner at a hundred miles per hour? How old to you have to be for a teacher to realize you cannot read or write? How old do you have to be till someone cares about you? How old do you have to be till you can learn love and to be loved? How old till you realize you are not alone in this world and others see you for you and you can too can understand and see others for who they are? As I am sitting here trying to write an answer a song popped in my head, from so many years ago, “the answer my friend is blowing in the wind the answer is blowing in the wind”. Peace my friends and please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts and to always give thanks.

namaste

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