Busytown: See me grow
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Actually it is great to hear of you son's curiosity, as it is fundamentally the province of intelligence. Bright kids know the answers but very bright kids ask the questions. "The Question is the Answer". Sadly observations show that it is very rare for kids to ask questions in classrooms. Sometimes actively discouraged.
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When asked that pitfall of a question, I learned early on (by 6) to say,
"An artist" watch for the bepuzzlement or outright bafflement tinged with underlying hostility and add quickly "or a nurse."I had no intention as a kid to ever become a nurse: this hardened by adolescence...
Well done your boys - and especially, well done their parents, other family, and friends. Their growing up will have huge challenges but - I trust - some of petty stupidities & vindictiveness visited on kids in the 1950s will never mire them.
Person who is an artist of sorts, never allows interruption of reading (earthquakes excepted, and is still not sure whether she has grown up...
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When I grow up, I'm going to build a New Zealand town exactly the same as New Zealand, right down to the ice cream, so Americans can get a taste of what New Zealand is really like.
If he builds it near Pittsburgh, serves flat whites and includes a Burger Fuel, I will be supportive of this endeavour.
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nice writing, what a great world you inhabit, i lost myself in it.
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When I grow up, I'm going to build a New Zealand town exactly the same as New Zealand, right down to the ice cream, so Americans can get a taste of what New Zealand is really like.
But then the secret will be out, and everyone will want their very own New Zealand town with ice cream! Where will the madness end?
Now I'm thinking about my possible future role as a town planner for New Zealandtown USA. When you enter the city limits by vehicle, will you swap over to the other side of the road? Will cabbage trees and pohutukawas grow in the American northeast? How can we get rid of fire ants so that all the kids can walk to school in bare feet? Does the country have enough canned beetroot for all the hamburgers? Will visitors be issued with a small translation booklet explaining our words for 'fanny', 'confectioner's sugar', and 'cilantro'?
(This is a welcome distraction from 'OMG my husband's entire family in Houston is going to drown!!!' Christ that is a big hurricane.)
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But then the secret will be out, and everyone will want their very own New Zealand town with ice cream!
See, that's my concern. If the tourism people keep telling the world how great it is, eventually everyone will move here and then it won't be so great.
We should keep it on the quiet and just invite people via facebook or something.
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(This is a welcome distraction from 'OMG my husband's entire family in Houston is going to drown!!!' Christ that is a big hurricane.)
in my case it's "OMG my wife's family ....", last time they evacuated, this time they're sitting still, hope they're OK
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Paul, you married a Texan too? We are legion!
I'm watching the eye of the storm go over Channelview (my husband's hometown) and Baytown and head towards Liberty and Humble, where the whole family live. It's somewhat stressful... I could be pretty happy if I never had to hear the phrase 'hunker down' ever again, though.
We should keep it on the quiet and just invite people via facebook or something.
Don't worry Kyle. Americans talk a good game about emigrating, but they hardly ever leave. :)
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town planner for New Zealandtown USA.
Surely it would have to be called Waikikamukau...
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He should totally go here for his Gap Year.
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I spent some time recently with an American from California. It was his big dream to come to the clean green New Zealand. It was going to be so different and inspiring.
We had some of the wife's rellies out from Florida and Bermuda for our wedding. We picked them up from Akl airport & drove them down to Hamilton, the uncle spent half the trip leaning out the window with his video camera filming the scenery. We were like "Geez, Duffy, its just farmland", but he was amazed at how green and lush it all looked.
He was even worse when we tripped off down to Taupo, going through the pine forests. It was quite the eye-opener for me, as I grew up in Tokoroa, pine trees are just something that gets in the way of the scenery, but they were all oohs and ahhs over it. These are people from a jewel-like caribbean (not really) island, and Florida, eponymous for its flora, and they were impressed with the farmland and pine forests.
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I didn't realise it at the time but, when younger, I wanted to be a somewhat benevolent dictator.
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I completely agree with the comment about voting. I wish it was practical for everyone to take an IQ test and a politics awareness test from the age of 16 and over and only those who score highly enough are able to vote.
I believe 16 is old enough to be able to have a say in how your country and life are run. I also agree that there are a lot of people out there who either have the right to vote and don't exercise it, or vote blindly and ignorantly.
Would their vote not be better used by a younger, more intelligent and more politically educated citizen.
I wanted to vote from about the age of 11, and always wanted to be a politician. I used to be determined that I would first be PM then receive US citizenship and run for the Presidency.
I am now glad that my father put me off becoming a politician. "It's a 'rat's game'" he would say. I think my desire was more a longing to assert control over a world that a child has very little say in.
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I wanted to vote from about the age of 11, and always wanted to be a politician. I used to be determined that I would first be PM then receive US citizenship and run for the Presidency.
You'd have needed to change the constitution first. You can only run for President if you were born a citizen I believe.
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I wish it was practical for everyone to take an IQ test and a politics awareness test from the age of 16 and over and only those who score highly enough are able to vote.
I'd agree with the idea of letting younger people vote, but the IQ and politics awareness part is rubbish. Plenty of well educated and aware people voted for the fascists in Italy back in the twenties and thirties; my grandmother could barely read and write but she was then and always remained a socialist (not that she could vote until 1946, mind).
It's universal suffrage or bust. And let's lower the voting age, sure. Kids need a lot more of a say in how things work.
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It's universal suffrage or bust. And let's lower the voting age, sure. Kids need a lot more of a say in how things work
See, I don't agree with that for so many reasons. There are plenty of right minded teens around, but not enough in my view to warrant lowering the voting age. But then, I don't think kids should be allowed to have sex till they're 18, so what would I know?
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See, I don't agree with that for so many reasons. There are plenty of right minded teens around, but not enough in my view to warrant lowering the voting age.
It strikes me that they can handle weapons of tremendous force, in the form of cars, but not vote.
But then, I don't think kids should be allowed to have sex till they're 18, so what would I know?
Madness! It's what keeps them from all driving into trees.
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See, I don't agree with that for so many reasons. There are plenty of right minded teens around, but not enough in my view to warrant lowering the voting age.
I suspect the most sensible, fact-based, polite debate to be held in parliament over the past few decades is when the Youth Parliament sits for a day. I'd happily take them writing our laws over the circus we have at present.
I don't buy any argument that a bunch of people of a certain type are not right-minded. It's not a qualification we apply over 18, so I don't see why we should apply it under 18. You could as easily say a reasonable number of voters over 80 suffer from dementia and alzeimer's, yet we don't have a maximum age for voting.
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There are some kids who know what they want to do from pretty young - and follow through. Then there's the ones who do what one of their parents did, be it teacher, lawyer, nurse, layabout etc.
It fascinates me how those ones who do have a set path "know" that's what they want - how do you know what you want? Maybe it's dreaming yourself into into it somehow. I kind of envy those with that kind of certainty and ambition - me and ambition in the 'must get ahead' sense are strangers!
My eldest is leaving skool at the end of the year, 18 and not had a proper job - he hasn't a clue what he wants to do. Seems quite passionate about enviro stuff - the state of it all - so maybe that's a future path. He worries tho, that he hasn't got a firm direction. And what can one say? Chill out, have a gap year and try a few things out has been my response, just hope it's the right one.
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Kerry, your advice is sound, as was my mother's to me when I didnt know what on earth I wanted to really do with my life - "Just try all the options you're comfortable with."
I'd didnt find out what I really wanted to be/do/spend my working life at until I was 35 and my first book was published.
Even now, I think I may have made a terrible mistake, and I should've picked the archaeologist option...or maybe the chef?
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Even now, I think I may have made a terrible mistake, and I should've picked the archaeologist option...or maybe the chef?
Nah. No mistake there. And you are a fisherperson and chef of the catch, as I recall from another thread .... made me realise my deprivation in the seafood department, possibly because fish have always ignored my feeble efforts at catching them.
I was kinda hoping my boys would be something useful like plumbers or builders...a matriarchal fantasy, I fear, where I get to be chieftaness of my own little kainga, which they of course would build. A forest is stronger than a single tree and all that.
My younger boy has it in him to follow the creative path, it will be interesting to see if he gets hooked. I can't possibly recommend it as a sensible path in this world of getting and spending but secretly I'd be thrilled.
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My Mum *is* a matriarch, greatgran and all that, and she had the same kind of fantasy e Kerry- only most of her daughters turned out to have endometriosis (or were slightly weird,like me) and her sons - well, they bred beautifully but not all that much- so she has a wonderful pack of grandchildren & up & coming greatgrans - and not a plumber among 'em!
But. glory be, all healthy. thriving now, and diversifying-
you ever want to to come fishing south - here is a good place-
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I don't buy any argument that a bunch of people of a certain type are not right-minded. It's not a qualification we apply over 18, so I don't see why we should apply it under 18.
How low do you think is reasonable? There are plenty of nousey 12 year olds around.
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It would be nice for kids to be able to apply for it from age 12, but I guess that opens the door to parents being able to brow-beat their children into voting a certain way.
However, considering that at age 16 one can enter into a (supposedly) life-long commitment, legally create people, be jailed for "life", and drive a lethal weapon on the public roads, I would've thought being able to vote was a far less serious right.
Cheers,
Brent. -
My younger boy has it in him to follow the creative path, it will be interesting to see if he gets hooked. I can't possibly recommend it as a sensible path in this world of getting and spending but secretly I'd be thrilled.
I think this thread needs a good dose of the good Sir Ken. Whew, it had been been almost two weeks since the last time I linked to him.
But. glory be, all healthy. thriving now, and diversifying-
I'm hoping one day to have a portfolio of diversified children myself. I'm thinking one in property, one in shares and the third in bonds.
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