20150316.0818

I realize that I am a little later than usual in writing this little piece. It is my break. I am ostensibly on vacation. I may be permitted to laze about a bit before diving back into things, I think.

That said, there are things to say. Ms. 8, the Mrs., and I took a little trip to the City of Thunder yesterday, enjoying the kindly spring weather as we crossed the re-greening plains between it and Sherwood Cottage. (Yes, I know it sounds like a fantasy novel write-up. You are invited to guess why.) There, we ran a few errands that we had allowed to pile up, including getting a couple of nicer shirts for me; since I have job interviews coming up, it makes sense that I have clothes worth going to them in. We also picked up a number of books for Ms. 8, including copies of some that I had had as a child. A good time was had by all.

In the evening, the Mrs. and I read a few of the books to Ms. 8, who seemed variously interested in and unaware of the efforts. I noted a few...oddities in them, things that I did not realize as a child and that would likely have occasioned no comment when the books were written and released but now strike me as strange. In The Poky Little Puppy, for example, the puppies' mother makes them chocolate custard for a dessert, which the eponymous puppy eats. Yet chocolate is poisonous to dogs. One has to wonder what kind of family dynamic is in place that has a mother make such things for her children. One has to wonder also what kind of metabolism the poky puppy possesses to eat a whole chocolate custard with no penalty.

Yes, I know "It's just a kids' book. It's just a story." We make meaning through stories. We tell stories to tell ourselves who we are and who we want to be. In some sense, we do not exist as thinking beings without them. Having such oddities in the stories we embed into our children's minds early on, then, has effects upon them--and, to those who will say "I had such stories, and I turned out fine"...did you? Did you really? Are you fine? Are you happy with it? Did your cohorts who also had such stories turn out fine? Is the state of the world as it is really a result of people having turned out fine?

I have had opportunity to consider such things.

The break is not a wholly removed thing; work continues, of course, and not only in such writing as I do here. More, the kind of thinking that underlies the work I do, the habits of mind and results of long practice that are about to allow me to make much of freelancing opportunities and that will help me get a few more job applications sent out (and maybe get a paper written), never stop. They are always with me, making the world more complex and, if at times more absurd, all the more engaging.