Since I’m fluent in meme, I’d like to start this column with one of my favorite mad libs style memes currently floating throughout social media outlets. Surely, you’ve seen this one. It goes a little something like this. “Some of y’all _____ and it shows.” Typically, you would insert a common element of your childhood that today’s kiddos have never been subjected to, using the gooey center of humor wrapped in the sarcasm of barbed wire. For instance, to showcase the unfair ease of the cellular telephone in this modern age, I might pen this meme. “Some of y’all never cut off the circulation to your torso by winding your body into a 25 ft curly phone cord while standing in the hallway talking to your best friend for 2 hours and it shows.” See, it’s not something you use for a belly laugh. I was hoping for a side smirk and an internal heck yes. If you’re one of those individuals who feels that today’s youth have sub-par consequences for bad behavior, you might enjoy this one that I did not author but found on the interwebs just now. “Some of y’all never heard your Dad’s belt slide out of 6 loops in 2.6 seconds and it shows.” Easy. Remember, the messenger shan’t be executed. This is just a sly way to say, to the masses, let me show you how lucky you are by showcasing how difficult things were back in the day – a modern twist to the uphill both ways in the snow speech. And, isn’t that the way child rearing goes? Things change. Technology pushes normalcy to the edge on a regular basis. There are so many peculiarities that shift to a polar opposite action, sometimes in relatively short spans. When I had my first baby in 1986, you were a horrible mom unless you had plush bumper pads that matched the crib quilt/sheets/pillows/ wallpaper/car seat cover/high chair/walker. We don’t use bumper pads anymore. They’re dangerous. Babies only slept on their stomachs in ‘86. When my next kiddo was born, it was side sleeping only with a wedge to hold your baby in place. By ‘91 when my daughter was born, those little babies had to stare at that ceiling fan on their backs. Nowadays, we strap their arms down to their sides. And, that brings me to the actual matter at hand. Today, I can peruse the internet and research multiple ideologies on all topics of parenting. Hopefully, I would use this to piecemeal together the perfect strategy to nurture my children. But, back in the day, we only turned to one man for all things baby and child related. His name was Spock. Dr. Spock, that is.
On December 5, 1955, Dr. Spock took over the world when his name was mentioned on I Love Lucy. This would be the perfect meme injection point. “Some of y’all never watched every I Love Lucy episode in order and it shows.” Anyway, this is the episode where Little Ricky is 3 and Lucy is exhausted from the perils of motherhood, prompting Ricky to insist that their tot start preschool immediately. Lucy hates this idea, but Ricky’s plan prevails when he turns the tables on his wife, who revealed she was a big Dr. Spock advocate. Ricky reads from Spock’s book on child-rearing citing preschool is the way to go. Things that vaulted in popularity from this episode include Little Ricky’s giant teddy bear that was placed into mass production and the illustrious Dr. Spock. If you didn’t already know him, you sure did after this airing. And, Dr. Spock ruled the world of parenting for decades, both as the savior of parenting and as its most dangerous villain. His post war child- rearing criteria differed greatly from that of the depression era, valuing independent thinking over stern discipline or demanding the best for kids instead of the best behavior from kids. Sounds fine, huh? Yet, as humans, we take everything to the extreme. His teachings somehow morphed into the thought that physical possessions can increase happiness & who doesn’t want happy kids? There were impressions that Spock was telling parents that a child feeling good was far better than a child doing good things. Sparks of truth in everything? Sure, though the Dr. is now being blamed for an increase in entitlement and materialism among kiddos that is still prevalent today. I see stains of Spock in my own grandchildren. I was raised in an odd combo environment where my father, a strict disciplinarian, demanded silence and some sort of magical discernment power as to know when addressing adults was required vs when speaking was to be avoided. Yet, my mom was a Spocker to the extreme, always countering that depression era discipline with prompts to help me realize self-worth and the benefit of deep thinking. Just this past week, my granddaughter was peppering us with rapid fire questions. The “but whys” were intense and never ending. I told my weary daughter-in-law the story about the people in the white house. My mom read that Spock felt a parent should always have an answer for a child so the child would feel the safety net of belonging with someone who knew the answer – all of the answers. So, when I asked who lived in a certain house while driving to the grocery store, my mom invented a Peyton Place worthy story that she had to remember each time we passed that area. This led to my first car ride with a friend’s mom many years later when I proclaimed that to be the house where a woman named Sue lived, though everyone called her Butterball because of both her weight and her propensity to properly cook a great turkey for all holiday occasions. Poor Sue never had any children (I guess mom decided she would never remember all those details if she added kids to the equation), but she and Bob had carved out a wonderful life in Seagoville after returning from working as missionaries in Africa, despite Bob’s awful nasal allergies. Alas, some of y’all were never told complicated, fictitious stories by your mothers in order to satisfy your need to feel the safety of knowledge in all things…and it shows.
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