T-Rex

I'll get back to the serial killer another day...I thought that turned out pretty good so far--as you can tell, he didn't get me (but he is a serial killer and he tried to get me...) That type of 3rd person writing is very exhausting to me, because it requires active empathy with the character as you write....it's quite different from journaling...

So this morning at 5:00 AM, as I was feeling my way around my house as my contacts became unstuck from the backs of my eyes (overheard on a hunting trip: "Dude, you're hard core! You sleep in your contacts?"--I've never seen the movie "Dude, where's my car?", but I've known dumb-asses that talk that way and always thought it would make interesting observation from afar for the rest of us with IQ's in triple digits). So during my Helen Keller moment, I came face to face with a T-Rex (back in my day, when you met one, you called it a Tyranosaurus Rex--when did they shorten it to T-Rex? As a Biologist, a lot of times we abbreviate the genus and just list the species c. lupus, u. horibilis (that one's for Nicole=grizzly bear), lemna minor) Anyway, I digress...

The T-rex is a big orange plastic one from Hot Wheels that we bought for Ryan for Christmas 2003. For any parent of boys, Hot Wheels are a scam--their stuff is crap, doesn't EVER work properly, breaks easily, and eternally lingers around your house in a half-ass, mediocre state. And it's cheap and looks cool so your kids want it, people love to give it to you because it fits just perfectly in the price range (marketing genius--a lot of bang for your buck), and it will curse your life. Other than those minor factors, it's okay.

So this T-Rex is staring at me at 5:00 with red glaring eyes--then, of course, I accidentally bump it as I pass by and it gives off a huge roar...right outside Ryan's room.

Ryan usually wakes up early, but I think someone would find me with cement shoes in the middle of the Trinity River if I woke the house up at 5:00, so I just held my breath and waited...and while I waited it occurred to me: Jesus died so I could buy this cheap hunk of plastic--what in the world does this represent?

Another side note: Kaitlyn, my 1 year old daughter, can mimic sounds and voices a lot like I can (ask to hear my Godfather someday...). The first time she heard T-Rex roar, she belted out an identical sound--we all just looked at each other and freaked out...then made it roar about 20 times trying to get her to do it again, but she was all smug about it, like "You already know I can do it, why would I want to do it again?"

So I avoided catastrophe and the household remained in their pre-dawn comas.

Getting a little on the heavy side now, I was reading about child welfare and a shift in social attitudes toward children. In the past, it seems, the legal assumption of children was as though they were property of the parents, hence the "get up and work your ass off and be careful what I don't kick your ass" mentality that I always think of. Parents could pretty much do whatever they wanted, pretty much short of killing their kids, and even then there was room for interpretation...

The new legal mentality is that parents are actually caretakers of children on behalf of the State (this is true across the country). This gives the state the right to police children's condition and care, and even gives them an assumed responsibility to oversee child welfare. To me, that's quite interesting and I don't know which way I agree with. In order to view this, you have to compare two extreme conditions: One in which the parents are abusive or neglectful, and one in which there is a misunderstanding of a specific incident.

In the view where the parents are abusive/neglectful, the State assuming caretaking responsibility of children enables it to act forcefully with immediacy on behalf of the children. In the olden times, it seems that it was much more of a process to go through and welfare workers felt that their hands were tied.

In case of a misunderstanding, it appears that the new method places burden on the parents to prove a negative, which is a dangerous situation. I just think about taking Ryan to the doctor for his check-up with bruises on his legs because he was playing full-contact soccer with a buddy...The doctor kind of shot us a sideways glance when she was examining him, and I felt a little bit of worry...

Okay, I know that isn't a fun topic, but it's something to think about.