today...
...i "worked" for the first time in three months. i babysat the kids joel normally watches. they were fun and i enjoyed myself for the most part, although the experience further confirmed two things in my mind
1) don't think i could ever teach/work with suburban/upper middle class kids. i know that is probably a really unfair stereotype, but all my experiences with them have been "eh." more likely than not, they are spoiled to some degree and act pretty immature and are lacking in imagination. give me city kids any day.
2) no matter how much money jay and i ever make, i am sure i would NEVER want to live in a housing development. maybe this is me being very superficial and unfair again, but i don't think i could take it. i watched a bunch of high school kids coming home from school, driving cars that i probably could never afford, to huge houses with no character. is it a nice place to raise your kids? i'm sure it's "nice." i know most likely, you do not have to worry about your kids or the schools they are going to, but there is something so stale and stagnent about it. it completely does not appeal to me. i've never even had friends who lived in a place like this, so today was really my first experience being on the inside of one of these huge plans. it must be nice to have friends in easy walking distance, but you can have that anywhere that is a "neighborhood," urban/suburban/small town whatever. i feel like these plans are really shut off from the real world. which is probably what these parents want for their kids. i just wouldn't want that for my kids and would choose the city/urban setting any day. but who am i to even comment on having kids...i don't have any nor do i see having any in the near future (if at all). this is just how i feel right now.
now after saying all of that, i will say that mary ann and her kids are really nice and i really liked them. the kids are funny; mackenzie invented a game called "sneaking" which consisted of her, dylan and i walking through their basement and...well... that's really all. dylan called me "mr. embly" and that made my day.
two other things:
a) i also forgot how stinky kids are...
b) something needs to be done about children's television. joel warned me. wow. that speaks for itself.
posted by emsley @ 8:48 PM
4 Comments:
sounds like you had a nice day. ;)
(this comment is both jokey, and serious...probably much like your day.)
you and jay's posts both earn a beaming A+! Perhaps this is because I just had the best car sing-a-long/e ever...
Hey em, It is nathan here and I see your points dealing with kids living in housing developments. However I guess speaking for myself, I turned out a bit different than most of the kids on my street. As did Brian (the apollo guitarist) who lived on my street. My parents never really spoiled me (my mom more than my dad if i was spoiled). So i never really experienced things given to me or a desire to get possessions. My one exception of course was my car which I bought and don't entirely regret (i do wish i bought a cheaper one looking back on it, however it is almost paid off). But that's just my take on how i lived growing up. I did love the neighborhood and loved playing hide and go seek and things of that nature. I did feel very safe.
nathan- i most certainly don't think you're spoiled and obviously not all kids who grow up comfortably are spoiled. i wanted to clairify that my purpose of writing this was not to slam the people living in these plans, i know for a lot of people, this is ideal living and they wouldn't want to live anywhere else, especially with their children. it's just not for me and that was made very clear to me yesterday. i felt so cut off from everything. but not in the way that i feel in the country or out in the woods. i almost felt like i was in a vacum. but like i said, that's just me and i'm not trying to say that it bad to live/grow up in a place like that.
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