Catch the Baton

I'm waiting for my youngest son to finish getting ready so that we can go eat breakfast. Every two weeks or so, Dan and I have a breakfast date. It's pretty cool that he actually still wants to do this, and he even picks up the check every once in awhile. We have a good time, and even talk about "important" things sometimes. Within a year or so, he'll be making more money than me, so I hope we can continue this tradition of breakfasts out after he's out of school. By then, he'll be carrying a briefcase and looking so very-business-like and grown up, making his own way, like young men have been doing since the beginning.

In 30 years, or so he'll grow nostalgic for "home", and drive past the old home place, telling his wife and children, "That's where I used to live. There's my school. There used to be a Braums there, and a hardware store there, and, oh, my friend Michael used to live there...did I ever tell you what good times we had back then?" And his children, like children have been doing since the beginning will roll their eyes and listen to stories of his youth. "Oh daddy, things aren't that way anymore. That was back in the olden days." And there will be a knot in his throat and a catch in his voice as he says, "Yeah, you're right. Things aren't that way anymore." Looking at his kids, he will feel like parents have felt since the beginning- that his kids have somehow missed out on something important from his generation. And so he begins another story, this one about how he threw a bat in anger one summer day because he missed a ball being pitched to him by his brother. And the bat hit a window at his school and shattered it. And about how he ran home, and his mom marched him back up to the school to view the damage. And how she made him confess to the principal that he broke the window, and how the prinicpal and his mom decided he should learn a lesson, and how for the next week, he worked after school doing chores-like sweeping the parking lot. His children look at him incredulously. For breaking a window? Accidently? You had to sweep the parking lot in the 104 degree heat? A life lesson learned. And passed on to the next generation. Mission accomplished.