A Day in the Life of Chaos

A story I love to tell is about my child and when I took him to a pride festival.  He was probably about eight years of age and when we entered the event we were greeted by men holding hands with men, women with women and even elegant cross dressers and transvestites.  I consider myself a very tolerant person but I couldn't help but look.  "Wow, look at those guys." I thought, or "man, he is a good looking woman, check out the size of those hands though."  My son on the other hand entered the event and went straight for a sticker table festooning himself with ribbons and stickers.  The moral of the story is that he didn't see a thing.  He didn't see two men hug or two women kiss.  He didn't see the awkward transsexual or the flamboyant queen.  All he saw was an opportunity to score some cool stickers and pins.  Maybe snag some carnival beads. I tell this story because it is an example of how much a parents attitudes are reflected by their children.

There is a time in every parents life when they wonder if the punishment fit the crime.  When their child does something they shouldn't do, how do you respond?  Even worse, how do you respond when the crime is serious in the eyes of another and quite ridiculous in your own? I have attempted to look back to my own past for guidance yet have come up dry.  Perhaps it was because I was vastly more culpable of serious infraction than my child.  On the other hand, it might have something to do with the fact that on one occasion when my mother attempted to seriously punish me the entire affair ended in disaster.  I remember it as clear as day.  In my family there is this spoon.  Legend has it, it was given by a Russian Czarina to my Great Grandmother after she performed a piano concert for her accompanied by the legendary Polish pianist Paderewski.  In truth my grandmother was the family equivalent of a solitary bass fisherman who claims to have hooked a small whale in a local lake.