Chapter 11. Accepting and benefiting from guided tours.

Chapter 11.   Accepting and benefiting from guided tours.

Though I have been focusing on personally created journeys I do not mean to say that guided tours are wrong, harmful or do not provide benefits.

The guided tours that parents provide when we are young, especially from birth until we start school help us learn and develop basic human skills that will help us throughout our lives.  The guided tours they take us on or sign us up for during our early years or teen years can also be helpful and greatly beneficial at the time and in our future lives.

It is the guided tours that only fulfill their specific goals or unrealized dreams that I have seen as harmful and detrimental to their children and families.  Some examples include the father who never tried out to become a professional athlete or never strove to become an Eagle Scout, the mother who never seriously worked at her music or dance lessons, either who never worked hard and long enough at their talent to succeed.  Each of these are examples of frustrated people trying to fulfill their live dreams and cancel out their own failures through their children.

Though my overall memory is vague about my youth what small memories I do recall reinforce the premise that my parents mostly let me create my own journeys most of the time.  They did not try to correct their failures through my life.  They seem to try to guide, sometimes strongly guide my brothers, my oldest brother to go to college and become an engineer and my middle brother to at least finish high school before joining the air force.  In my case guided tours they might have wanted to control were simply accepted in my mind.  I would finish high school.  I would go to college and study something serious that would guarantee me work and a safe and secure life.  I would stay out of trouble.  All of these I did without questioning the Triptiks involved.  I simply follow the guided tours, page by page rarely venturing off the other person highlighted routes.

My parents never actively decided…

Who I played with 

What I books I read 

What I did with most of my free time 

What television shows I watched 

What magazines I read or at least carried around with me

Whether I did my schoolwork or not

When I did my chores

A safe environment, a safe home, these are what my parents provided.  Occasionally there were the comments about school but seldom, except around report card time when A’s and B’s would be complimented and C’s would be ho hummed which was followed with couldn’t I do better than C work.  Looking back that always seems out of character for my father when I consider how hard he worked and fought to complete his high school diploma, complete a tool and die apprenticeship, complete a fraudulent correspondence course and eventually complete a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering in record time and then followed that up with attempting to work on a masters in mathematics only to walk away from it because of a disagreement with his professor.

My father’s nearly obsessive commitment to learning was never forced on me or openly stressed as an example of what I was expected to do.  In the end he did serve as a virtual mentor and role model as I did become an obsessive learner spending much of over 20 years in college working toward several different degrees.

I even successfully bluffed them by changing the grades on my report card back and forth when I was a freshman in high school.  They saw 3 or 4 Bs and a C.  What I actually had were 2 Fs, 1 D, 1 B and a C.  By the end of the semester I ended up with actually 3 Bs and 2 Cs.  A great improvement.  To them it meant I went down.

It is amazing what some creativity and a very carefully used abrasive gray ink eraser can do.

Think about the guided tours your parents provided you or encouraged you to take in your childhood.

Sunday school?

boy or girl scouts?

sports?

YMCA or YWCA?

after school activities?

activities at home?

summer camp?

vacations?

family activities?

My parents did none of these.  When I started going to church when I was 13 with my friend Milt to his Methodist Church they were positive about it.  When I joined the boy scouts and worked my way up to the Explorer Scouts once again they were positive and mildly supportive.  They came to awards nights to support me and my dad took photos.  Mom sewed badges on my uniforms.  They came to visit me the one summer I was selected as senior patrol leader and was sent to two weeks at D-Bar-A Scout Camp.  I was selected because I was the only Explorer Scout left in the troop.  All the rest quit after we mildly vandalized the school gym one night.

On the negative side of not choosing guided tours for me…

My father never saw me play baseball.  He never played catch with me.  He took my middle brother and I to one Detroit Tigers game that I vaguely remember.  He wasn’t involved in my life that way.  He committed himself to providing and doing the job he loved and being a silent role model as a hard worker and serious learner.

My mother attended occasional PTA or Parent night events and a few school programs: the Glee Club, the play I wrote and directed, and when I received an award as a member of the safety patrol.  Actually I think it was when I received my symbolic belt and whistle.  They came to school graduations.  Apparently proud but only once said so and that was about my masters in art degree that I had no respect for myself.

Were your parents actively involved in your life when you were growing up?

Did they teach you how to hunt, fish, play sports, camp?  Did your family camp out or go on picnics?

Was your mom or dad your coach?  My parents wouldn’t have known how.  Neither one of them really had childhoods of their own.  They came from England and Scotland and never played American sports.  My father was a television fight fan for awhile and did enjoy watching an occasional Sunday football or baseball game but was never really much of a fan.  Those were a couple things he enjoyed doing when he wasn’t working or studying to become better at his job.

Did your parents provide fun activities?  art projects?  hobbies?  science projects?

My parents created and provided a safe home, food, clothing, dental care, summer trips.  Years later after analyzing and analyzing and reanalyzing my family life I learned to appreciate both of my parents, who both had died before I became mature or wise enough to want to get to know them as real people and eventually become friends or fellow human beings with them.

They each came to this country as many of their generation did from other countries, countries foreign to the United States of the 1920s and 1930s.  They left their families, their birthplaces, their homes and the worst depressions in the world to seek out safer and more secure futures in the U.S.  They were both only 16 when they came to live in the U.S. and eventually become American citizens.  My father was brought to McKeesport, Pennsylvania where his father had married a cousin of his first wife’s, my father’s mother, and set up a home with her 3 children and possibly for his 4 sons.  My father’s 3 brothers were brought over later one at a time.  His youngest brother, who was only a baby when my father left England and did not come to the U.S. until after World War II bringing with his German, war bride.

My mother first came to the U.S. under a contract to work as a maid for two years in Holyoke, Massachusetts, a form of indentured servant, in exchange for her travel to the U.S. and sponsorship.  After completing her obligation she ventured towards Detroit, Michigan where one of her sisters was living.  There she landed a job as a cook and maid for a wealthy automobile family in Grosse Point Farms.  Within a couple years they met, fell in love, married and began their own family of 3 sons.

I share only briefly this small portion of their stories to make a point.  They both sacrificed a great deal, gave up a great deal just to come to the United States neither being really prepared to be on their own in a strange new country.  Both left their families behind.  My mother left her parents and 8 brothers and sisters.  My father left his 3 brothers, uncles and aunts. Perhaps that is why they became the mostly serious, quiet, introverted people I vaguely knew as my parents.

They were both very sincere, honest, hard working people.  My father appears to have been driven to prove himself based upon the evidence of his extensively hard continuous efforts to become an engineer.  My mother was not driven except to provide a good safe, secure home.  She was a provider.  She no doubt she was a nurturer when I was young.  What else would explain her devotion to make sure I became normal?  Yet I only remember once hugging her and that was the day that my first wife, my middle brother and his wife showed up at my parent’s home to tell them that their first grandson had died that morning from leukemia.  That was a secret that my two brothers and I kept from them throughout the 5 months that my nephew suffered, went into remission and suffered again.  A secret that I suggested we keep and my brothers agreed with me about.  I was an idealist who also knew that my parent’s both had heart conditions and would have probably pestered my brother and his wife endlessly, who had always wanted to be left alone to live their own lives.

What activities at home did your parents provide?

Did they teach you life skills?

to sew,

to repair small motors and machines,

to draw,

to draft,

to take photographs and develop them

to garden

to cook and bake

to clean

how to be trusted to complete an assigned task

I was mildly taught some of these.  Most of them by my mother because as I entered my teens my father was home less and less because of his chosen long hours at work.

Trust was an important trait or skill taught and expected in my house.  My mother often sent me to pick up groceries at Paul’s, a local corner grocery store, located 3 blocks away along a major road.  She either gave me a list or simply told me the few things she wanted and gave me the money to pay for them.  Then off I went walking or on my bicycle.

I will never forget one of the items: lean ground sirloin not hamburger or chuck.  To me it was all hamburger meat that she made delicious meat loafs, macaroni goulash, sloppy joe’s, soup or the occasional late night hamburgers out of.

I think I was 8 or 9 when she started sending me to Paul’s, the dry cleaners, the drug store.  Each were located along 8 Mile Road and 3 to 5 blocks from our house in either direction.

When I was going through the orthodontic work on my mouth she trusted me to ride 3 busses one way to a part of Detroit I didn’t know.  Yet later she wouldn’t let me do the same in order to go to the best public high school in the city, four years of experiences that would have definitely directed me along another path or two in my life.  She trusted me to ride two busses back and forth to my high school 5 days a week.  Much of the time I kept the money and walked or hitchhiked to school instead.  Ah yes one of my secretive, devious behaviors that would have ruined the trust she had in me had she ever known.

Are you actively involved in your children’s lives?  Are you taking them or signing them up on guided tours as part of your plan for their growth?

When I was a young father I played with my two sons from when they were first born.  When I wasn’t working at my full time jobs, part time jobs, moonlight work or going to school I played with them.  I made a point to play with them, one reason was because I wanted to, another was because my father never had that I could ever remember. I believed that I owed it to them and I was determined to be the kind of father I always wished I had had.

We played little games, family board games, went to the park, played on swings and monkey bars when they were little.  We through elaborate family and friend birthday parties.  I created their Halloween costumes and trick or treated with

them. I built snowmen and forts with them.  I played in piles of leaves with them.

When their mother and I separated and then divorced I became the dutiful weekend father.  I would pick them up each Friday or Saturday morning and then we would spend the entire weekend together playing.  We played basketball, baseball, football depending on the season of the year.  Many weekends we road bicycles everywhere in our town of Boynton Beach.  Some times we road all the way to Lantana or Lake Worth to play in the public pools or on the public beaches.  We road or walked to the Boynton Beach nearly every weekend to play in the water and on the beach.  Some weekends we walked everywhere together leaving my car by my little apartment to save money on gas and to have fun.  We climbed trees.  We grocery shopped together using what little money I had week to week. We made and packed our lunches and ate them hanging from trees.  We shot pool and played ping pong at the city rec center.  We went to the library.  We went to Christmas Parades or road in them.

Yes I took my sons on journeys, many different journeys.  Gradually I involved them in the decisions about what we would do and how we would spend what very little money I had each week.  Most of the time I spent most of my money just on the weekends on the things we did together and had very little to nothing the rest of the week.

I did all those things for both their benefit and for mine.  I needed their love, I wanted to earn theirs and I truly wanted to give them mine.  By that time they were 9 and 6.  Both my parents were dead by then.  My two brothers lived 1500 miles away in Michigan.  That wasn’t so hard because we had never been close as kids and only had played card games a couple times together after we were all married or played the occasional holiday time ping pong game. 

In my family we were 5 biologically related strangers living in the same house.  Had any of us needed help in an emergency we would probably had done anything to help.  But we lived our separate lives otherwise most of the time. 

Each of us has suffered our life tragedies.  My oldest brother suffered the pain and loss of his first son’s battle and death from leukemia.  My middle brother suffered along with his wife when her parents both slowly suffered and died from diabetes and then he was there to support and care for her when she went through the same long drawn out death and dying from diabetes and her very numerous hospital stays.

What about you and your children, your husband or wife?  How active are you in each other’s lives?

Being active in someone we love’s life of course is a good thing.  The types of guided tours we take them on or sign them up for are filled with great potential benefits.  It is how we become involved that can make them harmful or negative.  If we become a demanding coach, an obnoxious parent in the little league stands, an obsessive teacher or trainer we certainly can create lasting scars and damage in their lives.

Did your parents take these roles?  Have you?

If the behavior is in the past you can not change it.  You can learn from it and alter your current and future behavior.  If this is your behavior now you can certainly stop it.  Back off.  Learn from your mistakes.  Move ahead in a more positive manner.

Accepting the benefits of guided tours

Belonging to the boy or girl scouts can provide you or your children great fun, chances to make good and maybe life-long friends and provide many opportunities to learn skills that will be useful in your future work and your personal life.

Playing on an organized baseball, football, basketball, hockey team certainly can also provide a lot of fun, friends and skills plus help you develop a good healthy body.

Going on guided tours together can certainly provide many benefits, many that will last entire life times.

Before you decide on the next guided tour ask yourself how might you turn it into a creative journey that will provide even more fun, memories and life benefits.