Day 134: The Wake of Forgiveness

The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart. ISBN: 9780151014439 (Advance Reader Copy - publishes Oct. 21, 2010).

Ugh, yeah, I've had to stretch on this one in case you couldn't tell with my rambling post yesterday.  Mostly this was a book I just couldn't get into; there was a whole section of the of the book that did not seem to be related at all to the story.  Anyway, I'm going to go for the obvious here.

Ponies!

Well, horses actually.  There's a lot of horse racing in this book, and apparently a lot of fools gambling their land and livelihood (i.e. their land) on these horse races.  These are races that took place in the woods and were not properly witnessed or anything like that, but I've definitely enjoyed watching a horse race or two in my time.  And like the Skalas, my dad was the one who introduced me to it.
 
I think my first horse race was around the age of 8, we would have been either in Oklahoma or California at the time.  For some reason my brain is telling me we were probably in California.  We mostly went to greyhound races in Oklahoma, which was a completely different kind of spectacular.  There is something about watching so many horses that represent decades of breeding and expense.  There is a joy in taking in the scent and sound of the race track, and watching the faces of people who have staked claims they can't afford to lose.
 
Anyone who's ever been on a horse knows how difficult it can be to control one.  I always marveled at jockeys willing to ride horses that weigh at least twelve times their own body weight.  You have to be pretty ballsy to slap an animal with a leather strap who can turn you into jockey powder simply by rolling over.  I've enjoyed riding horses on family vacations, although I haven't been in ages.  Even though I'm always slightly intimidated by the animal, I always enjoy myself once the horse stops trying to brush me off.
 
I've never been one of those girls who was a horse nut, but I can definitely see the appeal.  I think everyone should have exposure to an animal that is larger and more powerful than themselves.  It gives us a perspective that we are not as bad-ass as we think we are.  We're so used to household pets, that we forget what it actually means to have animals out there that can kill us and I think it would smack some humility back into the human race.  Shark week be damned.
 
Also, happy 2nd anniversary to my sweetheart, who is definitely neither a shark nor a pony.

Day 133: The Wake of Forgiveness

The Wake of Forgiveness by Bruce Machart.  ISBN: 9780151014439 (Advance Reader Copy - publishes Oct. 21, 2010).

This is mostly a book about the Skala family in Texas during the late 1800's.  Vaclav Skala is a pretty reprehensible character who treats his four sons like beasts of burden.

I think I can kind of understand that behavior.  Part of that is because I cannot imagine having something I care about as much as I would care about my children, only to see them die before me.  It would be easier to treat them like work horses so as to avoid any emotional attachment.  I almost wonder if higher live birth rates and life expectancy for both women and children had to occur before we could obtain child labor laws and women's rights (which have both increased further).

I am thankful that I no longer have to wonder if a pregnancy is going to kill me.  I am thankful that I no longer have to produce children for a marriage to be valid and legal.  I don't have to worry about my husband sending me back to my parents because I could not get pregnant (regardless of who was at fault physically).  I have control over my pregnancy or lack thereof during marriage and out of it.  These are pretty much all of the things that have popped into my head while reading The Wake of Forgiveness.  I'm also thankful that if I did die and produce children, that my husband would have the children taken away from him if he strapped them to a plow and worked them like horses to the point their necks were permanently bent.

There's chores and then there's chores.  I have no problems with making a child do his own laundry at a certain age.  I'm pretty sure I was doing my own laundry about the age of five.  At the very least I was definitely folding my own clothes and helping sort them.  Not much longer after that I was expected to help with vacuuming, sweeping, cleaning the bathroom, and doing dishes.  My brother was supposed to do chores as well, and sometimes he did, but he was also much better at terrorizing my parents and sometimes weaseled out of it if they were particularly tired.

I don't see many kids who seem to have chores these days.  Granted, they do seem to have much heavier schedules to begin with - soccer practice, band practice, piano lessons, AP courses, etc.  But they also seem to have far more privileges than I was ever afforded.  No way would I be allowed to even take my Nintendo to dinner, much less play with it during a family meal out at a restaurant.  And then there are the 10 year olds who have cell phones.  Nice cell phones. 

If you give your kid a $100+ piece of electronics when they aren't even old enough to sign an online service contract for Neopets by themselves, don't get pissed off with them when they destroy it.  They are children, you are the adult; if you are that worried about them being off by themselves without a cell phone then they should be with an adult.  The cell phone won't help them if they're going to do something stupid without adult supervision.  The cell phone can't tell them, "Hey, it might not be a good idea to put that cherry bomb in the toilet."

Honestly, with the shit I got into as a pre-teen and teenager, I don't think they should be left alone by themselves for longer than two hours.  Seriously, you can get away with some shit in two hours.  And that's okay.  Teenagers need to fuck up a little, but it's a lot easier to avoid the big mistakes when you can say, "I'm supposed to meet my mom at 11:30, and she's a total hard ass."  I think the biggest mistakes parents make these days is not giving teenagers ample room to make them the scape goat.  Yes, they need their space, but they also need you to be the adult so they and their friends can hate your guts.  They will love you for it later when they realize they're one of the few people they know in high school who made it through without ODing or having to get an abortion.  Just think about it. 

And OMG, stop giving 5-year-olds DSi's.  I didn't have an original Nintendo until I was 12 and those things were god damned bricks.