I am about to utter something I never could have foreseen myself saying. I am thankful to my parents for being pretty broke when I was a kid. When I observe the entitled children around me (my own included, unfortunately), I am surprised at their lack of life skills. Growing up on a mountain, I learned to fend for myself. When it snowed, we shoveled, we built forts, we sledded, we skied, we skated. My children ask for hot chocolate. Without daring to go outside. When we used to lose power, we read by candlelight, and pulled blankets up to the coal stove ( because we had run out of oil). My children ask if the DS is charged, and why our TV does not have battery backup. I pass by girls on the side of the road, with their overpriced SUVs sporting a flat, and I am concerned about the fact that she has not been taught to change tires, change spark plugs, change oil,as I was. I hope her beautiful SUV does not break down on her in a bad section of town at night. When I was young, I split logs on my porch, and helped my dad stack them in the backyard. I helped my mother hang sheetrock in the house, and epoxy her countertops. I helped lay bathroom tile, and watched all the neighborhood children. I don't know that many kids in this era could claim the same, and I fear that many do not even know how to use the washing machine or iron their own shirts. Girls are being taught that you feed your baby with canned powder, rather than the milk their bodies produce. Boys are taught to be aggressive and ruthless by the plentiful video games with war titles. Kids in elementary school are texting their friends with their iphones, but are having a hard time with simple division. I see myself writing this, and I laugh because I sound like the grandfather, bemoaning his walk to and from school in barefoot, uphill both ways. But each generation must be horrified of the next, losing the will to work for things, relying on dwindling fossil fuels, and refusing to learn the lessons that could keep them alive if survival of the fittest were put to the test. I am proud of the things for which I have worked. Jake and I have jokingly said that if everyone could live a life of poverty if just for a year, the world would be a changed place(with scads more liberals, I might add). It would be an interesting social experiment. To replace the opulence of the Real Housewives for the Real Little House on the Prairie. I, for one, look damn good in a bonnet.
When I was nineteen years old, only a year into adulthood, and only hesitantly an adult, a man sexually assaulted me. We had met in our apartment complex one night, at the community pool. He was good looking, a military man, cocky and confident, and I was going through the end of my first relationship away from my small hometown. I invited him into my home. I kissed him. I let him into my bedroom. That was where my permission ended. When I told him no, he proceeded to try to shove his genitalia up the leg of my shorts, and when I began to cry and told him to stop or I would scream, he told me I was a tease. And I felt guilt. I am going to say that again- I felt GUILT. As a girl, I had been preconditioned to believe that I could feel bad for getting a guy "worked up", and I didn't kick him out. I slept on the floor next to my bed, while he slept in my bed, and I woke to him trying to do the same thing, only to my face. That time, I was done. Typing these words out makes
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