I face a serious personal crisis and I honestly do not know whether, should it come to it, I will be able to rise to the occasion. I am a Patriots fan. My only grandson , eight year old Samuel Emerson Wolff, is a Forty-Niners fan. If the Patriots beat the Broncos tomorrow and the Niners beat the Seahawks, my Patriots and Samuel's Niners will meet in the Super Bowl on the day I fly home from Paris. I have sent a message to Samuel that I will stand with him and root for the Niners but I do not know whether I am strong enough to stand by my commitment
Oh Lord, Let this cup pass from me.
Might be time to introduce the concept of a pluralistic society?
ReplyDeleteTry telling that to an eight year old
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ReplyDeleteCharming, Andrew, and pedagogically correct. But were you ever a grandparent?
ReplyDeleteI've been a parent and I've certainly had the conversation in a slightly different form, that is, the some-people-like-this-or-that-but-you-or-I-don't conversation. One of the first times was about how it was alright for him not to like Nutella. (Really, go figure.) That conversation was very early, about five or so. Yes, I've tried. How successful was it all? Good question. Don't know. What's the test? I'd start with ice-cream flavors or something and work my way up to baseball. Although, since I could care less about baseball, that particular conversation didn't come up, but I do recall the childhood conversation about how he could like football (or was it baseball?) even though it bored me to the point of needing a neck brace.
ReplyDeleteBeen there. Repeatedly. (Do not attempt to be the mother of adolescent daughters. Pluralism doesn't sell.)
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, the rules, or their absence, become an entirely new ballgame, as it were, upon reaching grandparenthood. wait and see, ideally without a neck brace;)
What's there to sell? "I like it. You don't. Get over it." What is so hard about that? Grandparent or not. You've seem to have seen something, but I don't know what. In my experience, I prepared my son for pluralism so that his grand mother could simply say, "Hey, I like Nutella...." What exactly is the problem with this? In retrospect, dealing with this was a snap compared to hard drugs such as heroin and a ever growing list of "kids" dying of overdoses. I don't see how an adolescent can deal with the second, if he or she can't deal with a simple fact like differences in likes. Be there,
ReplyDeleteThat is to say, been there.
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