"AS A MAN THINKITH" or "MEMORIES"

Today I started the day late having slept in. I awoke around 8 a.m. and started my day in the usual way, making the bed, getting dressed and so on.  I then jumped onto the World Wide Web, to see what-if anything-was new and to look up a few things. As I suspected there wasn't anything new on the web and, as luck would have it, my brother was at the door asking if I wanted to indulge in an old custom of ours.

When we were kids we would get up early on Saturday mornings grab a bowl of cereal and camp out in front of the T.V. to watch cartoons and other 

various entertaining shows. Well, of course, I said yes and hoped to it. He had found some of the old shows that we used to watch on youtube. The good ones that tried to teach you something...not sell. Shows like the "Banana Splits", "Laugh Olympics", "Space Ghost", "Blue Falcon & Dynomut", "Scoobie Doo", "The Jetsons", "The Flintstones", and so on.

It got me to thinking about days gone by and about all the good times we had sitting around the T.V. as a family and enjoying the show (and yes, sometimes a meal, mostly snacks though). Kids and families don't do that anymore......................there always seems to be an argument going or everyone is parceled out in other rooms watching something different in each one. Maybe my family is just weird, but some of our best times where when we were all together watching T.V. Now that's not to say that children should spend all their time in doors around the T.V., but maybe if just once in a while the family did something like that the kids would feel more stable in their own skin at other times.

For instance: my nephew said something that hurt my feelings a little bit, over the Christmas break. Eighteen years old, home from College, he tells me that he feels "Damaged". Not in the physical sense, but emotionally/mentally. Now, I quickly told him this wasn't true-that "He Was Not Damaged"-the situation, the family dynamic maybe, but HE was most definitely not. I know I'm not perfect, the family isn't perfect and things around us are not perfect, but then we don't live in perfect. I do know this though, that, for a few brief moments in the lifetime of my memory we were just a family sitting in front of the T.V. watching a world go by, and loving each other. Yeah those were the days when life's melodrama's took a backseat to Family time, when the only discussions were about who was doing what in the show's. Life seemed to stop for those few brief shining moments in time, but I guess that's why they call them memories...what do you remember?