© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 100
I started writing this column a couple of years after watching American Beauty. The movie had preyed on me for quite a while. If you don’t take it any deeper, there is a certain inherent futility to life: you work, you get things, you survive, you die, end of story. The chances of leaving a trace are slender under these bare-boned circumstances.
The birth of my daughter gave me impetus. What could I give her? Certainly I hope to give her things. But more than that, there needs to be something more enduring. The material loses in the appreciation stakes as we grow accustomed to it. New toys tend to lose their excitement after the second set of batteries is inserted.
The chance to write and publish this column provided the spur. I write, and she will get my ideas. So for 100 Fridays, this column has appeared. I hope you have enjoyed it, and thanks for reading it. If you are a regular, don’t worry, there will be more.
I don’t know if this column will help my daughter, or add to her. That will be her choice, years down the line. But knowing that I have taken the trouble salves my conscience to some degree.
It is not a good time in which to grow up. Never before have children been so maligned and treated as ‘the enemy’, as they are today.
As this column is written, I am keenly aware that American researchers have invented a type of noise which drives away teenagers, much like the sonic devices of the 80s that were said to drive off cockroaches. They have tested this noise in at least one mall and it seems to work.
Why, in God’s name would anyone want to shop in a place that actively attempts to drive off their kids with sonic devices?
Then there is the fact that the USA, as a whole, though probably not all individuals, treats its kids as potential homicidal maniacs in the wake of a number of high school shootings. Kids go through metal detectors as they enter schools, security guards fear the ceramic Glock, and a toddler was suspended from his playschool for pointing a pork chop at a teacher and saying ‘bang’.
As all things American go, these ideas will spread to kids and parents across the rest of the world as some form of half-baked substitute for creating a decent environment filled with mutual respect, understanding, responsive parenting and safer opportunities for the illicit thrills of rebellion than the neighbourhood gun dealer.
But there is more to the problem of raising kids than the growing perception that they are to be feared.
There is a growing complexity to life. In order to get everything done we break our time up into minutes. The media provides everything in bite-sized chunks measured in a tempo of minutes, punctuated by the counterpoint rhythm of ads, all designed to capture our attention without losing it. And in this wild flurry of scheduling, there is little or nothing that accepts the need for time to interact with children. After all, they have the holding pens that are their schools, followed by afternoons in front of the TV, with the company of materialism and all their things. And there is no sign that the complexity will diminish. Instead it becomes more complex.
It is not a great time to be a kid. Nor is it a great time to be a parent.
This column is my act of rebellion. It gives me time to settle my head, understand myself to some or other degree, and be more human with my daughter. I hope that my understanding of myself and the world around me will give me the measure of sanity that I need to help her find her way.
But I am inherently lazy, and without editorial deadlines, I would probably never get around to writing it. And without your readership, there would be no justification for its publication, and no deadline. So once again, thanks for reading it. Thanks for 100 Fridays.
Now for the moral. There is too little though and forethought in the world. With a bit more time and effort, and a bit more application of grey matter, children need not be our enemies. There’s something to think about.
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