Have you ever looked up and found your kids doing something both unexpected and not encouraging?
The other day while I was remodeling my kitchen I looked up saw one of my kids sitting on our deck reading and sunning. “Great! Weird, though,” fired off my thoughts. See she used to read quite a lot and I wish she would do so now. I was curious to know what had caught her eye, but not curious enough to race over and interrupt her.
A day or two later she was at it again, and to satisfy my lingering curiosity I tried see what she was reading. Problem was she held the cover wrapped back on itself. Finally, though her posture and her fingers were just so allowing me to see but one word. Just one word and my mind wiggled a little at it. Do you know what that word was? Sparks. “Hmmmm, Sparks? Could that be Nicholas Sparks? Man, it must be.”
Well, I read a lot and am sort of familiar with movies that come out. There was this Nicholas Sparks book made into a movie. Yeah, see that picture over there on your device? This book stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List for like a year straight. It is not to hard to put two and two together with the faces on that movie cover. So, that’s my “Sparks Perspective.” I had other mental baggage about this too as reasonably or not some people have called it “soft porn.” I’ve seen some ladies from church (unfortunately) snicker a bit about these things being “beach reading.”
What a mess. Daughter is reading. Daughter clearly old enough to understand the whole bit about sex and all. One night at dinner she even popped out with, “all married people do it!” Well, at least she had the married bit correct. Somehow my inklings about Sparks gravitated to unmarried bed action. Even if said action was married perhaps I was not keen on the 16 year old wandering through what another might write in a book.
As a parent I am not naive to the influences she faces, but seriously? On the deck, in the sun, reading away at a Sparks book? Not sure I was lovin’ that.
Let’s go a figuring out of things…
When I was her age in the 1986 or 1987 era I brought a Star Trek novel home from the library at Papillion La-Vista High School. I cannot remember the name of that paperback but weirdly enough I do know it had a purple cover. In short order Bam! I had a parent collision. Dad told me it was off limits; I could not read it; it had to go back to the library. See how that experience sort of stuck with me? Since then I have found novels to be enriching and work well for my mindset. Maybe not for my dad’s mindset, but that is another story.
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