Something Old, Something New, Making A Dream Come True

Yesterday my wife told me a story about something that had happened to her when she was young. Right after that I had to take a shower and get ready for work. Sorry, I know that conjures up a disturbing mental image but that's the facts as they are. Actually I do a lot of my best thinking in the shower however since I'm wet I can't write anything down and often tend to lose those great thoughts unless I make a serious effort at remembering it.

Anyway, as I showered I thought about her story and then somehow  began to think about a poem I had written a long time ago, before I even moved to Oklahoma and that was at the end of 2001. It has sat for all those years and I've never done anything more with it. I ended up thinking that perhaps I could review it and see about doing some editing, perhaps making it more descriptive.  Then I segued back to my wife's story and realized that if I give it some good thought I could make a poem of that.

What happened with her was that when she was six years old there was a religious procession with statues on platforms that people carry and many people get totally absorbed in their worship. They chant (it's Catholicism) and almost reach this state of mind that resembles a higher consciousness because of how much they concentrate. Unfortunately they also can lose track of what is going on around them. My wife fell and was walked on by several people and nobody helped her. Luckily she was able to get up without being seriously hurt.

That's not something I can just toss off with little effort. I'll have to really think about how I want to word things and how I want to present the happenings as a whole. I have some preliminary ideas about people getting so wrapped up in what they are doing that they loss sight of their surroundings. You know, the can't see the forest for the trees kind of thing. Once that and the other re-working I spoke of earlier is done I plan on looking at other things I've written and giving them an overhaul and finally I want to record them and put them out as a podcast episode.

That's something I've have thought about for so long I couldn't tell you when I first had the idea. I do remember a cousin of my roommate  from when I was in the Army in Washington D.C. telling me that she liked my poems but she felt that they needed to be read aloud in my voice to get the full effect. That was in the early nineties so probably it was sometime right before that. For some reason I've never done that but with technology where it is today there's nothing to hold me back, other than my sever procrastination and self doubts that is.

The time is now, I've put off doing things like this for too long and I need to get off the pot (not talking about weed) and get things done. Nobody will do it for me, I have to make the effort and I must say my chances are looking better and better.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

poem for my mother

while I was young
life was hell
falling asleep at night
listening to you rant
how i was no good
"i'll send you to your father"
even though you didn't
know where he was
for a bad grade
you yelled at me
then gave me the same
when i got a good one
the wrong lesson learned
it's better not to try
with my shared name
secrets passed over me
life lived oblivious
left out always excluded
is it a wonder
it took me so long
to learn my truth
recovery can be a bitch

reflecting on time
raising three young children
i see the difficulties
you had to live with
no help from the runaway
man that chose you
society looked down
it's long nose
the short supply of money
engulfed by life's demands
the pain and anger
left on your shoulders
is it any wonder
it came our way
spilling over the levy
overwhelming your defenses
you didn't know
how to cope
the world wasn't fair
life even less so
it's the only way
you knew to fight back

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

poem for my father

in your life
you held many titles
father and son
Sergeant First Class
Vietnam veteran
deadbeat dad
champion habitual liar
disappointer of your
children's children

i wonder which one
filled you with
the most pride
the most shame
if you could feel it
it's far too late
to find out
you've left again
this time for good

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

The Sad State Of Youth Today

I've recently seen an article on Yahoo about a mother being upset how her son's grade school teacher had sent a note home to her. It seems that the teacher in question had stapled a note to the boys shirt informing his parents of his actions. When questioned she stated that she had done so because she had previously sent homes notes and believed that he wasn't giving them to his parents. The mother said that she had received the notes but was upset because her son had been publicly embarrassed by this treatment and that it was unfair.

Now when I was young it was common for teachers to pin a note to your shirt so that it wouldn't be forgotten or overlooked and yes it was normally because you had done something wrong in their eyes. Since I'm not part of this situation and don't have all of the details the only thing that I can comfortably comment on is to speculate that if the parents say they had received previous notes and that the teacher was unsure if they were being given to them then it seems to be that perhaps there was no communication between the two parties. That would explain this disconnect between them.

Thinking a little deeper though this makes me think about how we are raising our children. Currently I feel we are raising generations of children where they don't seem to be able to take criticism at all nor do they understand why they are suddenly not special anymore. Case in point, athletic leagues. Nowadays every child on every team gets a trophy because sometime in the past some parents thought that it wasn't fair that only the top three finishing teams got trophies and that it made their children feel left out and that they weren't good enough. Instead of teaching them lessons that have real life implications such as you can't always be first and that sometimes your team may not be that good and it holds you back but doesn't diminish who and what type of person you are, they chose to try and make every child feel that they were all equal.

That's the problem right there. No matter how much we try to make it so, everybody is not equal. Some are faster, some are smarter, some more athletic, some bigger and some smaller. Some catch on quickly and others have to have things explained to them point by point. None of this means that one person is better or worse than any other, it only means that we are all different and can't be judged by the same standards. I may not be as good looking as others but I have things about me that stand out and make me who I am. So what if I'm not the best athlete or video game player? None of this matters in reality. Just find out what it is that you like and makes you unique, if only even to yourself.

Everybody cannot finish first in everything. It's impossible. There have to be people who finish last the same as there has to be doctors as well as ditch diggers. Simply put, we should be addressing ways to make the children understand that where you finish isn't always the most important thing, it's how you finish. It's the work that you put into it. We need to stop worrying if they get their feelings hurt so much because that's going to happen when they hit the real world. Right now most of them are unprepared for when they hit problems. They don't understand when their boss tells them that their work isn't up to standard or that they need to put forth more effort. They don't understand why they cannot immediately make the kind of money that their parents make. They just feel that everyone is being unfair and hurting their feelings.

So basically they are going to go through everything cruel and unkind in the world that all before them have gone through to some degree or another but they will have no idea how they should and can react. Instead it will be like a gate closing to them. Solid, unmoving and impenetrable. What do they do then? We need to be more understanding of what skills they are going to need to learn so that when this happens, and it will, they will be prepared and be able to solve problems on their own instead of coming running home because life isn't fair. It isn't and never has been so let's try to teach them something about this because it really is so important.

Published by Don Leach

More Star Wars

This one goes out to my brother-in-law Gary who is in Lima, Peru and may not have seen this one yet, it was played during the recent Super Bowl. Yes, it's a commercial but it's well done and I think it's funny.



And then I found this clip and it's also quite funny as well so here it is: