Happy Monday, one and all. Sore from hiking with the Scouts along the Natches Trace this weekend. We were hotfootin' through some of the most beautiful greenery I've seen since that morning when I left my home. I like some greenery.
The high spirits and positive attitudes of the Scouts and thier leaders is inspiring and it doesn't take much to get me going once I'm with them.
Once Ed and I got past the reluctance of our body and minds to the thought of the ensuing 20 miles, we kind of hit "the zone" where you disengage from the task and just drive on under autopilot. We talked superficially about this and that and then the conversation would turn to concepts of this and that and then get philosophical. Perspectives on the concepts. Higher order analysis. Miles of plodding. Plenty o' time. Ed's 11 years old and pretty much has his head on straight for his age. These gut-check activities help make him that way. I don't push him all that hard. He wanted to do this and he's leading me down the road. He leads me on other levels. As my father once said to me, my son puts me in positions I don't seek, but that add value to my experience and bring us closer. I lead my father to motorcycling and junkyards which turned into our vehicle for cohesiveness and Ed's doing the same with me using Scouts and guitar. Oh, do we like to jam.... I wasn't jamming on the hike, I'm 47 years old with 2 bad knees and more titanium in my spine than brains in my head, but as Buddah (club brother, not Buddist leader) once told me..."All ya gotta be is willing!" Woody Allen said, "80% of success is showing up." So who am I to sit idly by knowing I'm open to 0% success that way?
So many parents use these times as self-time. They drop the kids off to the Scouts, prepared or not, and pick them up at some predetermined point after all the life and trial and conquering and learning and value and purity and quality has been absorbed. Then it's back to mom or dad. How can you miss out on these times? Maybe there's some hard stuff going on that noone knows about and the Scouts are a sanity-check alone-time that allows them to recover and be more stable parents. It'd have to be a pretty darned good reason before I'd miss a moment of my boy's (and the others) development. At least they drop the kids off where they can be built into good, decent men.
1st post prattle. Get used to it. -Joker
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