"Those were the days."

A friend of mine on Facebook shared a meme that says "Growing up in an Irish household there was always two choices for dinner. Take it or Leave it." I suspect this is where I'm suppose to write "LOL" in the comment box.  Part of me agrees with the attitude in a way. My mom aka Granny Fry, didn't put up with a lot shenanigans.  However, she did know when to pick her battles. The likelihood of me ever eating fish? None. She'd serve me something else. Would pizza ever pass my brother's lips? Not a chance. She'd boil up a hot dog for him.

And despite both she and my Dad being the children of fresh off the boat Irish immigrants, I am pretty sure my father would have filed for divorced had she ever tried to boil cabbage in our home. (Kind of happy that was a rule now that I think about it. Have you smelled that? It's like death meets hot garbage.)

This take it or leave it mentality doesn't work in our lives.  Despite it being so black and white, which is funny because in most cases we dig some serious black and white type choices.  (And black and white cookies but I digress.)

I'm not driving myself batty to get my kiddo to eat the same dinner as I am because of a mind set from forty years ago.  We'll set our own house rules thank you very much. Can we stop romanticizing the past as some sort of end all and be all of how to parent?  We used to NOT put kids in car seats.  Want to take it or leave it on that too?  Don't get me wrong. I loved long car rides home at night in my parents station wagon cargo area. My brother and I would pretend to be in the Millennium Falcon and shooting at all the other cars headlights till we past out and then just rolled around all willy nilly on the Garden State Parkway.

My brother was always Han.  I thought I was Princess Leia but I'm pretty sure he thought I was a Wookie. 

Anyway, would I do that now?  HELL NO. So maybe past ideas aren't always the best ideas.  I mean, I would love to draw on the experience of my parents but they also thought that buying a BETA VCR instead of a VHS one was a good idea.  Also, they never raised an autistic kid.  So I really can't turn to what they did and that's okay.

This goes right along with that other "Copy and Paste" status update I see folks sharing of "My curfew was when the street lights went on." and all that nostalgia jazz. No, I don't think the Kiddo has less of a childhood because I don't allow him to roam the neighborhood without supervision.  I simply cannot allow him to do that due the nature of his disability. Happy to hoover right over him if it keeps him alive.  Yeah, I know. I'm fussy like that.

And my personal favorite is the sheer irony of folks posting about kids using iPhones and tablets by using THEIR OWN  iPhones or tables.  "We had outside!", they cried as they scroll on their smartphones, inside their homes.  Bitch please, your parents happily plopped you down in front of the Atari 2600 many a day.  Don't act like you grew up on zero technology.  (Video pinball rocked!)

Folks get old and see folks younger than them doing stuff differently. This is a tale as old as time. I'm not going to take it personally when they give me grief but I'm not going to stay quiet about it either.  I get it.  A guy just won an election based on this thinking of the past was great and we can make things great again.  I'm just not so sure what he means by that.

The new stuff becomes someone else's old stuff soon enough though. Folks thought Prohibition was a good idea once.  I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be so hot to revisit that.  (Parents and teachers everywhere would revolt.)

I'm not sure where I'm going with this other than I am just going to enjoy my moment of complaining about people complaining.  It's what Archie Bunker would have wanted.