With age, comes wisdom.....Most of the time...

Remember when you were a child? Not a care in the world? Your biggest fear was being late for supper...An age of innocence we all miss at some point, but it was also our 'innocence' that made us "fearless", to one degree or another as well...You werent afraid to go off that rope swing, or to jump that 4 foot high ramp with your bike. It was nothing to jump over a pile of burning leaves and laugh it off as 'cool'....Nice huh?..Those were the days.

...and now that you're older?..Well, unless Ive totally missed my mark here, 'now' is a different story. "Im not gonna' risk getting hurt. I cant afford to miss work and the hospital bill would cost a fortune if I were to....'whatever'". See?...Foresight you never knew you had when you were 10. A small seed of common sense that laid dormant since birth inside you, and then one day out of the blue.."BAM!!"....."I'd better not do that 'because'...." Of course, all of this is born of that awful word..."Responsibility". The truth is, it wasnt all that important to be responsible when you were that age. I mean, yeah. You'ld better clean your room when youre told and rake the yard or what have you, but think for a moment about what those little things were...Cleaning your room?...Raking the yard?.Nothing more than 'training tools'. A means to an end. Something your parents implemented on you to teach you about life and give you a small little taste of what was to come...The Real World...and if we hadnt of done those things we were asked?...Well, other than getting our butts blistered and maybe grounded.....nothing...No consequenses what so ever, save a sore behind and having a messy room.....and what of the consequenses now? For not doing that TPS report at work, or not doing that research project and presentation?....Well, I guess I dont have to really answer that..

Thats my point though. Its LIFE..Its EXPERIENCE..Its The REAL WORLD that changes our points of view and hones the way we look at things in general....but there are other examples as well, and maybe even a sort of "exception" to that rule....It works both ways you see......Let me attempt to give you an example..

My grandparents were quite literally, 'dirt poor'. I was in their house once when I was very young, just before they tore it down...Trust me..DIRT poor. Anyway, like most of the folks around there in that day and age, 'home remedys' were the order of the day and very, very common practice. Hardly anyone back then could afford the distance or the cost of going to a regular trained physician, so they made do with whatever they had on hand and what ever common sense and experience life had seen fit to bestow. My dad was telling me just on his last visit here from Florida about when he was a child and the worst cold he ever had, and how my grandmother, (God rest her soul), dealt with it. First, for the cough and fever, she mixed him up what is still commonly known in these parts as a "Hot Toddy". To our grandparents, it was pretty much a cure all, mix it yourself tonic that consisted of whiskey, lemon juice, and honey. It was taken a tablespoon at a time, and I must say, it really feels like it works...Of course, after a few 'doses', who really cares anyway, right?....lol...Next was his chest congestion. For this, she covered his chest and the bottoms of his feet with "Vicks Vapor Rub", (She called it simply 'sauve'), put a hot towel on his chest and warm socks on his feet followed by a t shirt, and put him to bed under like 3 blankets so he would sweat. He swore by it and since I was born 3 months prematurely and was a sickly child most of the time, I got to experience all this first hand...along with my regular doctors visits....Sorry to go off on a tangent like that, but it was to prove my point. At the time my grandmother was covering me in Vicks and shoving "hot toddy" down my throat, there were more modern and plenty of 'over the counter' ways of dealing with a chest cold..but that didnt matter to my grandmother. That stuff costs money, and besides, her kids turned out fine...right?..Theres an old addage here.."You cant teach an old dog new tricks"...(Right up my alley too...lol), but what does that really mean? It simply means that my grand parents were stuck in their ways probably due to hard times and necessity...but that ALSO means that even as things 'progressed' and time moved forward, their point of view never changed..Not in that aspect anyway. They knew what worked and wouldnt be budged. Now just because other means of dealing with things existed at the time and they wanted no part of it doesnt really make them 'irresposible', but it very well could have....When I was about 9 or 10, I stepped on a rusty nail and it went all the way through my foot and poked out through the top of my tennis shoe. I hopped on one foot all the way home to find, much to my dismay, that my father wasnt home, leaving only my grandmother to deal with it. I was scared to death...and I was to find that my fears were not to be unfounded. Instead of putting me in the car and taking me to the doctor for a tetanus shot, which I would've preferred over what followed, my grandmother, yanked the rusty nail out of my foot, beat the bottom of my foot witha flat board from the kindling pile which made it bleed like hell, poured kerosene over it, wrapped my foot in an ace bandage, put my shoe back on me and told me to go play....Now folks, Ive gotta' say. I never had a lick of trouble out of that foot. It wasnt even sore the next day...but "what if?"...What if I had of gotten lock jaw or something from that nail simply because I was denied a vaccination?...Ya see what I mean? I guess points of view 'in general' change to one degree or another depending on the subject matter at hand and the individual, but there are exceptions to the rule.......There are always 'exceptions'........and that little fact, just like my grandparents, never changes.....

Thank you for your time.....

Rockeye