I Blame It On The Fairy Tales

I haven't been writing much, I know. The truth is, besides being busy with work (thank god), lately I haven't really been able to see the bright side of life. I'm not a pessimist, nor do I suffer from depression, it's just that sometimes, not very often, the "Dark Jake" takes over and then I'm more on the introverted side... C'est la vie :)

The good thing is, while I don't post here, I take notes on everything that crosses my mind, so at this point there's a nice long list in my phone with topics that (hopefully) soon will populate my blog...

Anyway, here's one right now:

Remember when you were a kid and your parents used to read you fairy tales? How simple was your life then, right? You were listening to fables from faraway lands, full of adventure and magnificent victories, and most of the time the morale of the story was very simple: when life brings obstacles in your way, all you have to do is get off your ass, make a wish (or, optionally, be polite to people who you meet on the way, in case they can make your wish come true) and eventually, without much effort (and with help of a magical artifact or two) you would reach your goal, achieve your dreams and live happily ever after...

People who write fairy tales like that should be shot. They fill your head with unrealistic ideas about how simple life can be if only you want to.

I think I'm not the only one who grew up into life of bitterness and disappointment, solely due to the realization things just don't work like that.

I'm seriously considering rewriting some of the classic stories of our childhood. The educational value needs to be refitted for the needs of our era. Luck, wishes and happy endings are great, but what about hard work? What about trying and trying and still failing miserably? What about slowly and painfully working your way up and facing the cruel fact that you might not be good at what you do, you've chosen the wrong road to travel along, you might have to reinvent yourself and begin from scratch again?

And don't even let me start on perfect love, prince Charming and living "happily ever after", without any trials that normal relationships bring, without the problems that arise when two people want different things and have different expectations (A friend of mine has this whole neat theory about Mr. Right. She divides men into Mr. Right Enough and Mr. Right Now, good for her).

Anyway, all these miraculous concepts polluted our minds, our fragile souls of childhood were forever blackened and tarnished by the notion of effortless future.

So, the fairytale I wish someone had read to me when I was the age when listening to fairy tales before falling into the sweet embrace of sleep was acceptable, goes something like this: 

"Once upon a time there was a boy called ...(use a name of your choice) and one day he's left his old mother's house (but he still kept in touch, because family is important, no matter what mistakes our parents might have made raising us) and decided to travel the world until he'd find his fortune. He travelled across the land, crossing rivers and forests and mountains, meeting all kinds of people, gathering experience and learning about life in general, until, after a lot of searching, he found a place he liked and decided to settle down.

He became a ... (once again, fill in the profession of your choice), because in his life he tried many things and now he knew this was what he'd like to do for the rest of his life (or at least for the time being). He started working hard on his skills, slowly but surely becoming better and better, mastering his profession. He had a couple of unsuccessful relationships, and one day, after few years of being single (and it's OK to be single, being with someone should not be an ultimate goal of one's life, romantic relationships are not the only relationships out there, friendship is equally important) he's met a person (I'm trying to be politically correct here) that he kinda liked.

They went out few times, the chemistry was good, they had similar interests and sense of humor (which always helps) and after few months they moved in together, and they lived relatively happily (with some both minor and major ups and downs, because that's how relationships work) until one of them died and the other followed soon after (see, you can't say I'm not at least a little bit romantic)."

This is the kind of bedtime story, in a nutshell, that might have made my life a whole lot easier to manage, comprehend and live.

The End

A Virtual Reality Check

Just thinking about what I'm going to write about in this post is making me feel old, old, old (not related to the b-day coming up).

I feel like a "going on 30" equivalent of an old man sitting on his porch, complaining about how the weather used to be so much better when he was young, how the kids were more polite, life more simple and much more enjoyable, and all that despite the fact he had to walk to school 10 miles uphill every day and neither snow nor rain would stop him.

How to begin... ?

I teach English, as some of you might know. Most of the time I help students with their speaking skills, which basically means I spend a lot of time chit chatting about their daily lives, hobbies, interests, opinions etc. (which, as a shrink, I really enjoy, since it gives me a great opportunity to gain a better insight into their generation).

Recently in class, while trying to prep my students for the speaking part of their English exams, I asked a simple (fairly simple, at least) question, as a topic for conversation: "Many popular movies are based on books. Some people believe that the book versions are better than the movie versions. Which do you prefer? Why?". I also wanted them to support their answers with specific examples. Note that I am talking about students 15+. Not very hard, is it?

It took me more less a week to ask the same question in all of my classes as well as the students that I'm tutoring privately. That's altogether some 100 students, a sample that is fairly representative (I really hope that my "Research and Statistics" professor isn't reading this, lol). But, for the sake of argument, lets say that it is a representative sample :) Anyway...

The outcome was exactly what I expected to hear and hoped I wouldn't.

As far as literature goes, way too many kids (or at least my students) don't read books. Only maybe some 10-5% of them actually do, because they like to. The rest of the students only read when forced to and they sure as hell don't enjoy it. Sadly, I even have some student that have not read a single book in their life.

Now, the really disturbing part is this: Most of the kids don't like to read and prefer movies, because books have too many details = are boring AND, god forbid, you actually have to imagine things in your own head (I'm quoting here...), instead of having them nicely presented on screen. So, when push comes to shove, children and teenagers today don't like to read because they don't want to have to think.

Of course, when you ask about their hobbies, all you hear is PC, Playstation 3 (the "3" is very important), Wii, PSP and there are kids who actually list "Facebook" as their hobby, how sad is that? I have quite a nice idea about how most of them spend their free time, since I know for a fact that last year's most wished for Xmas present among the boys was Call of Duty: Black Ops...

Not surprisingly, most of the kids who like to read are excellent students and vice versa.

I love to read. By the time I was 15, I've read dozens, possibly even hundreds of books. I'm not talking about books for kids only. E.A. Poe, Shakespeare, Irving, basically whatever I could get my hands on, starting with my mom's library and working my way up. Of course, I was a bit of a geek, I give you that. By no means I expect the kids to read as much as I did, being well aware that my love of literature deprived me of many other things (well developed social skills, to begin with).

However, developing brain needs stimulation and exercise, and I really don't think that watching TV or spending hours and hours playing Call of Duty (or even worse, Farmville on FB), provides teenagers with either of those.

Regarding technology, our world has changed drastically during the last 20 years. Internet, superfast computers and smart mobile phones , all those things make our  lives much easier, but the price we pay is fairly high, unless we realize they are just tools, nothing more, nothing less. The kids who were born into this era, from the very beginning of their days surrounded by all these things, have no way of comparing "now" and "then".

So I'd say all in moderation. Let the kids play games on Playstation, let them watch TV and have a facebook profile, but teach them to love books and other things, too. TV and computer games don't really teach them much and the only thing they nourish is passivity.

I know from my own experience (of course I play games on Pc too) how spending too much time in front of the screen helps to grow detached from the things that really matter, e.g. real life...

You don't want to live in a world when 15 year olds don't know who Gandhi was and watching them to come up with any kind kind of opinion is more painful than watching a glacier move, do you?

The Purpose of Raspberry

Today, in the middle of completely mundane task of preparing lunch, I suddenly recalled one of the oldest memories I have of my childhood.

I was born in a small mountain town and my grandma would be often taking me for walks in surrounding woods. By the end of the summer the woods would be full (for a given value of full) of raspberries and blackberries, and, like every kid, I loved picking and eating them, ripe and sweet.

Well, at one point, I must have been 2 -3 years old, probably one of the first times I indulged in harvesting the fruits of the wild, my grandmother saw me and warned me not to eat the berries without washing them first. Fair enough, although back then I asked her the most devastating of questions all parents and grandparents dread, the inquisitive "why".

The answer still haunts me, occasionally, since it was fairly inventive and burned an eternal image in my young and easily shaped mind.

My grandma told me not to eat the fruit without washing it, since mice climb up the bushes and then pee on the berries.

I swear, till today I can still picture a mouse needing very badly to "answer the call of nature", frantically searching for the nearest raspberry bush, climbing it, quickly picking up the ripest berry, carefully positioning itself balancing on its two hind legs (I was a small boy and that's how I peed) and then peeing all over it.

Kudos for inventive parenting :)

Of course, since I've spent a lot of my childhood years running wild in the woods, I've eaten my share of all kinds of berries, in my mind most of them quite probably used as rodent lavatory on regular basis, and this only taught me not to be too picky regarding the quality and origin of any kind of food obtained by means other than being bought in a supermarket.

Oh, the bliss of being a kid.

I guess sometimes, when you really want your berries, extra serving of mice piss is a small price to pay, so to speak ;)