Category: Youth

People haven't yet figured out that parenting is about love and care, regardless of race or sexual orientation. Here's an example. The other day, my wife had the great pleasure of appearing at ourlocal courthouse for jury duty. What fun, right? She had a few entertaining stories from her experience, but what troubled me more was the reply of a middle aged man who was responding to thejudge's question, "if you have bumper sticker on your car, what does itsay?" The man politely responded that he worked for a soup kitchen in his church and that the only bumper sticker on his car read, "Gays are not parents". I guess he thought his affiliation with a religious institution allowed him to have such an idiotic comment posted on his bumper.…

With the exception of teenagers who can’t wait to become full-fledged adults (why I’m still not sure) many of us aren’t really that tickled about growing older. I myself felt a little blindsided this year when after blowing out my birthday candles I realized I was 36 years old. That means I’m in my mid to late 30’s! How the hell did that happen and where in God’s name did all these gray hairs come from? I suppose I should be thankful there’s still anything up there at all, right? But even though I’m growing older, I’ve made a conscious decision not to fight it and become one of those people who spends much of their time and money trying to find a fountain of youth that simply doesn’t exist.…

I used to think that once you graduated from high school, you were forever set free from the catty, judgmental world of pubescence. But as a friend of mine recently reminded me, there’s no escaping it. Just look around your neighborhoods or the places you work and you’ll find the same populous hierarchy, the same backstabbing chatter and gossip and even bullying from teenage jocks whose mentality hasn’t changed even though they’re twenty-years older. I hated high school for this very reason, and now having been around the business block long enough, I find myself sometimes feeling like a teenager all over again. I guess adulthood is not exempt from the same BS that went on in crowded hallways and classrooms so many years ago. It’s easy to forget that…