The Vashishing Strawberry

Right now it is 6:51...AM! I have no idea why I'm awake right now. By all means I should still be sleeping. But now that I'm up I have the sudden urge to blog something I can't seem to get out of my mind. And maybe that is why I woke up at such an early hour (that, or nature was calling me after my wonderful cup of tea last night).

First, (and this is not what has been eating at me, but worth a mention...I guess) in the hours I was slowly coming to this morning, I had one of those half-waking-up/half-sleeping dreams where you make an attemp to do something while in bed but you can't because you're still in bed. Um... that doesn't make much sense does it? It'll make more sense when I tell you what happened. So... there i was in my half-and-half phase. I suddenly was holding a strawberry, though I was still in bed. I pushed this bright red wonder into my mouth about half way, waiting for it's delightful fruit taste. I felt it slide past my lips. Cold, but wonderful. As i bit down into nothing, disappointment filled me for a moment until I finally woke up to see that my digital alarm clock read 6:28AM. (Actually, I don't remember what minute it was on. It was the 6 that stood out, so don't believe the 28.) Okay, that it for my vanishing strawberry. I don't know if any of you have ever had one of those half/half moments. Anyways...

Now for what I really wanted to tell you, and not so much just to tell you, to keep a record for myself. It's something I really want to forget, but I can't bring myself to. It IS something that I should return to and remind myself how the world can be. I'll just get on with it. *sigh*

Yesterday, I went out with my friends, Lauren and Charlene, for most of the day. They came to pick me up at noon-ish. Lauren was driving the jeep, as she usually does. Her parents always have her doing errands for them, and she likes bringing friends along for company. But our plan was to go out to do these errands as well as go to the mall, then return to work out on Lauren's new gym equipment, and so we were gonna have lots of fun. Our first stop: K-Mart. What for? To pick up eight bags of mulch. Oh yes! The errands are never anything like "go to the dry cleaners" (as my dad will have me do on ocassion) or "pick up bread and milk." No, it's always something way more interesting.

We went into K-mart and headed to the section that has all the gardening stuff and plants and whatnot. I enjoyed the smell of everything at once, like nature got together for a party. It was awesome. When we found what we were looking for, we drove around to the stacks of mulch to let the guy working load up the back. There were so many stacks of mulch around that all I could think about as we left was playing on them, jumping from one stack to the next. How awesome that would be! Anyways, our next destination: Brass Mill Center; aka the Waterbury Mall.

Again, we had an errand to fullfill. Lauren's parents needed her to return a chainsaw (<---I wrote that as "chinsaw" a minute ago...ow!) of some kind to Sears. So we went to the front desk, got sent to the back, waited at the return place, finally got approval on the receipt, went back to the front desk...blah blah blah.

Then we went out of Sears into the mall (sears being a part of the mall, but it's only one store so... we went into the rest of the mall?). Lauren and Charlene headed over to Bank of America while I headed upstairs to Verizon HQ. The charger on my phone had not been working properly, and so I was in need of a replacement, or so I thought. Turns out that the problem wasn't the charger, but the phone itself. But my warenty was expired on it, and instead of buying a new phone and wasting money, I decided I would keep the phone (the phone works fine except for the charger issue) and buy a different kind of charger for it. The tech guy had suggested one that interts into the bottom of the phone, not into the side as mine had done. Much more affordable than getting a new phone. HOO-RAH!

I then went to Radioshack to ask for a bag to hold all my gizmos, as they were having trouble sharing my purse with a water bottle, a book, and all other kinds of junk I'm sure I don't need. I felt kind of bad going into a store with no intention of buying anything and then asking for one of their bags to hold my stuff. After all that, I met up with the girls and we headed over to Gentle Jungle to look at kittens in the window. *High pitched squeely noises and coos to be inserted here* Awe! They were SOOOOOOOOOOO CUTE! (I would really like to describe in detail all the awesome things these kittens were doing, but that could take a while so I'll just leave it up to your imagination as to what kittens do that's awesome. I'll give you an idea: a food bowl was spilled of most its contents.) We saw the lady inside come over with a young woman. She was taking out a kitten to hold. So of course, Lauren made the wonderful mistake of going along with it and asking to hold one as well. Charlene did likewise. I chose not to because of the damage these kittens had already done to my heart. I think it might have exploded if I held one, so I didn't. We all stood around, talking to the other two women about animals and pet stores and the pricing of pets and whatnot, all while enjoying the company of the kitties.

After a while, I told myself to get away from the cuteness of kittens and walk around the store before I ended up "saving" them all. I walked by the birds and the puppies and the ferrets. I couldn't really look at the puppies either because I might've ended up "saving" them, too. I made my way to the back isle of the store where it was very blue with shelves of fish tanks. It was very peaceful, very relaxing to watch these aquatic creatures just floating in front of blue backgrounds, as if there were no water at all. They were all so calm, and not one was wrestling with another or clawing at another's tail or knocking over food bowls. As adorable as all that is, these fish were cool in their own way. I noticed a tank with a few black fish that had bulging eyes. Although a little strange, they were cute in their own fishy way. I moved down the isle to look at the others. As I did, a little boy came running upto the side I had just been on, so I was at a distance.

(Okay, this is the part of that day I've been thinking about. Everything else is completely outweighed in my mind by this next event.) The boy was probably only about two years old, could walk okay, but couldn't say many words. Behind the boy came a man, his father maybe, saying, "You wanna see the fish? Hey let's see the fish!" The man picked up the boy in his arms to give him a better look at the higher tanks. They came across the one with the bulging-eyed fish I mentioned earlier. "Hey, look at his eyes" the man joked in his quick, Hispanic dialect. The boy pointed at the tank, smiling at the humorous features of the fish. "Man he got some big eyes, huh?" It was cute to listen to. But what tugged at my heart harder than the kittens or the puppies, and not in an "awe!" kind of way, was what the man said to the boy next.

"You know how he got them big eyes? Hey, hey! Look at 'im!" The boy looked on in wonder (and I was watching all this with my peripheral vision), listening to what the man was saying. "Hey, you know how he got them big eyes?" he asked the boy again. Of course the boy had no answer really, seeing as he could barely talk anyways. "He caught his wife playing dirty! Yeah! That's why them fish's eyes so big. Caught his wife playing dirty. He said 'whaaaaah?' That's why his eyes like that!" He enlongated the "what"sound that the fish supposedly made. "Yeah, caught his wife playing dirty, he said 'whaaaaah'? All the other fish said 'what??? after fifteen years?'"

After that, though the man continued to tell his fish tale to the boy, I walked away into another isle, unable to listen anymore. It's things like that which make me very sad for the future of our generation. I couldn't believe that this little boy was being exposed to the idea that wives cheat on their husbands. That, in my mind, makes the idea of marriage a negative one. It also gives the boy a bad impression of his mother(if that man was, indeed, the father). Or that women are not to be trusted. In some cases, yes, women cheat on their husbands, and some husbands cheat on their wives. The divorce rate in America is phenominal! Not only is Christ less a part of families these days, but what parents teach their children plays a crucial role in the developement of their children's lives. I mean, I'm not a parent yet, and hopefully I will be someday, and I can imagine it is hard to raise a child, let alone three or four. But I think it's important to start of children with a strong foundation of right and wrong, how to treat others, and to believe and trust in God. Once they have grown in understanding of these principles, and when they are at an age where you can talk to them about the world's greater flaws, you should be able to talk to them about things like divorce, sex, all the big things.

Not to say that you can shelter them from everything, but I definitely don't think a seven year old needs to learn about the world of sex, or even a twelve year old. Kids have heard the word "sex" before, just like swear words. They know it's bad, but thy might not know what it means. That's how it should be until they're ready. The first time I ever said the "F" word was in pre-K (PRE-K! BEFORE FIRST GRADE!). I heard a boy in my class say it several times and, not knowing what it meant, I said it, too. And I used it in the same context as he did. I told another boy who was bothering me to go "F" off. (I really hope none of you are laughing at this. I'm trying to make a point.) This got me in quite a bit of trouble with the teacher when the boy told her what I had said. I then learned what a swear was and that it was a negative thing. But I wonder this now: Where did the first boy learn it? Other kids maybe? Older siblings? His parents even? Where ever he learned it, why hadn't he been taught not to do it? I was four or five going into pre-k, so I'm sure he was not much older than I.
Another thought: the boy who tattled on me obviously knew what the "F" word was and that it was something very negative, otherwise he wouldn't have gotten me in trouble. Where had he learned it? Maybe he had gotten in trouble for the same thing. The point then, if that was the case, is that he did get in trouble. Even though parents love their kids (most of the time, which is another sad thing to think about, but i've already ranted way more than I should have) and it hurts to discipline, it is something that must be done. ESPECIALLY at a young age when they are developing a habitual sense of character and retaining information as kids do. I plan to follow through on punishing my kids in the future when they are going down the wrong path. It won't be because I don't love them and want to suffer, but it will be becasue i DO love them and want them to learn from their mistakes.

Okay, sorry for the rambling thoughts at the end. My overall point in all of this was that I fear for the future of our kids in this world we live in. It has become more of the world's world, rather than the Lord's world, or so it seems. Sometimes I just wish it could all be like my vanishing strawberry, real one minute and gone the next. Like maybe the event at the fish tanks was all in my mind... but I know it happened.

(It is now 10:17AM)