I worked the night shift for large portions of my children’s lives. That’s how it was done when both parents worked back in the days when the times they were a changing. Dad worked all night and Mom went to work during the day. Of course, that arrangement didn’t begin until the youngest started school—until then, we just sucked it up and carried on the best we could. We didn’t feel oppressed by a certain mean-spirited political party. We certainly didn’t feel endowed with a special privilege; it was life.
When my youngest son was in kindergarten, he and I had an arrangement. Lunch was in the fridge. He got off the bus, came in through the unlocked door, and claimed it without waking me. He was so good at being supervised by a snoring father that, on paydays I had him wake me when he arrived. We picked up my check and went out to eat as a reward. (His siblings never knew this until they had children of their own.) He was good at secrets too.
Then came my youngest daughter. To say the story changed is a wee bit of an understatement. Don’t misunderstand me, I love her, but she was not one to be unsupervised. “Daddy, you know I get into things,” was her watchword of the day.
I told you that to shed light on the fact that I’m unsupervised at the moment. That may or may not bode well. However, this is my chance to say something I’ve wanted to say for several weeks. I am seriously considering bringing this blog to an end. I feel that I am uniquely unqualified to write it because I don’t know jack.
In the general sense of knowing jack, consider that I’m a high school dropout. I did stumble along to an Associate’s in Applied Science degree twenty-one years later. That two-year endeavor still leaves me an uneducated, mouth-breathing, knuckle dragger. Living in an imaginary world has made my life interesting though. And it makes the delusions I labor under, if not easy, then less difficult to tolerate.
As for my occasional forays into rambling on about writing and writers, what I know on the subject wouldn’t spark a debate as to whether the thimble was half full or half empty. It is, therefore, quite clear to me that I should not be dispensing advice or opinions.
As for knowing Jack? I really don’t know him at all.
He is like a man from a story written long ago. As the story goes, there was a man who spent his life reading his books. When he wasn’t reading, he would sally forth into the real world in foolish attempts to live the life of duty, honor, valor, and chivalry that he read about. His manner and conversation were perfectly sound and his thoughts well reasoned until those subjects came up. Once the image and ideals of being a knight came up, he was lost to reality. He was beaten, ridiculed, robbed, and finally, deceived by his friends. He almost died a happy man. He was denied a happy end by his loved ones who succeeded in convincing him that he had read all the wrong books.
The fate of the blog? Just one more thing I don’t know.
Maranatha
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