The Inner Sawyer

Some kind of huge brain growth must go on around the ages of five and six where a kid's personality and idea of self explode into being. I know that Tom Sawyer was older than six in the classic books, but watching Jordan saunter off, towhead at an angle, taking care not to step on cracks on the kitchen tile, I'm drawn back to that simpler time somehow.

Times are anything but simple now. Instead of playing with sticks and stones on a dusty side street, Jordan plays with Xboxes and Playstations, where he's learned not only how to read but also why manual transmission cars have to be shifted and when. He downloads computer games, even helps me upload articles now and then, and when he gets tired of collecting bugs for his insect cage, you might find him on a six-speed Diamondback 20-inch bike worth more than all the bikes my four brothers and I had during our entire lifetime.

But still, he's a kid, a little towheaded improvisationalist who is ready to take on the world at any time or place. Except for doctors' offices. Too many bad memories of shots and swabbings, stabs and knockings to be totally trustful of the medical profession. It's kind of disconcerting, but it makes sense, much the same way his fear of the deep end of the pool wasn't cemented until he put on a snorkel mask and saw precisely what he was jumping into. So yes, anyone with any kind of memory capabilities will put each of those things together and not drop trou in a doctor's office or jump off the deep end of the pool without somebody being in it to catch him. Perfect sense.

And not simple, at least not to me; but when Jordan grows up, these will be the times he looks back on and remembers wistfully as the good ole days in the neighborhood. Then he'll jump in his spaceship and go to work.

The educational side of video games

Maybe Jordan's only using the space bar, mouse pad, and arrow keys, but he's learning how to type a little bit, as well as to read while he plays video games on my computer.

Much has been said about the danger of letting kids play video games too much. But I say games don't make kids bad, parents who don't play along with the kids make the kids bad.

In my day, we played lots of politically incorrect games. Cowboys and Indians was the main one, but also Americans versus Russians spy games comes to mind. However, I or none of my brothers has grown up to become cat torturers or building burners. Some of the games that are available now are much worse than anything we could have thought of as kids in the 60s, and indeed I would never let my child play some of them, nor would I want to play them. But it's still a matter of explaining and spending time with junior.

Some parents are not good examples, though, I will have to say, and that's one thing that causes the children to be better at being bad than the parents were. I think most parents strive for the opposite, making their kids better than they were at being positive and good. The news media and our attention are drawn by the explosions of the bad, however. And that's as it should be. We need to live defensively. More now than ever.

My son is playing a race car game now, and he's been told that driving a real car is nothing like that. He might have been leaning toward believing it was at one time, but that was never serious, I believe. He's a new human and he simply needs to learn what is true and what's not...for sure. As he gains more knowledge, he's more capable of figuring out reality.

And now, he's more able to read. He comes to me less and less to know what the words are on his games. So for the summer, he's having fun with video games and learning to read. That's not too bad.

Further realizations on the inevitability of...huh?

Jordan was six months old in the photo, having one of the best times of his life, apparently, the first time he met his Grandmother Farley. She passed away three years after this photo, so the pictures we have of her will be the only memory Jordan has of her.


Sorry about that title. I get carried away, but not far enough at times.

Being in Dayton, Ohio, now, I find I have a lot more relatives living closer, some just down or up or out the road. Yesterday, the Fourth, I took Jordan to meet some of his relatives on his Grandmother Farley's side.

Jordan doesn't remember his Grandma Farley, though he did meet her a couple of times when he was younger. He has vague recollections, but sadly, no real lasting memory. We shall build those up as time goes by.

Jordan almost always exhibits that happy-go-lucky attitude in the photo wherever he goes, especially if he knows he is among friends and family. He revels in being in such a crowd. Any crowd is okay, but especially friends and family. Probably because they are more likely to let him go on and on like he does, as if he were a stand-up comic or a motivational speaker. And if some of the crowd is made up of kids his age, look out for your eardrums.

I would not be so amazed by Jordan's actions around people were it not for my own propensity to stay out of crowds. I'm not phobic about it, but if given a choice, in most cases, I opt away from the crowd.

I'm glad Jordan likes crowds and being with people. I enjoy watching him act and react as much as those who have never met him before. However, I will begin to carry cotton for my ears, for those times that he meets another person his age.