July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Change is good (02/18/08)
As I See It
By By DIANA DOLECKI-
Emma may have started a new tradition in our family. I had a birthday last week. My daughter called me and wanted her daughter to sing "Happy Birthday" to me. Being a typical two year old, Emma said, "No."
She wanted to sing the "ABC" song. So she did. It was the short version as she left out quite a few of the letters. I loved it. I have never had anyone sing the "ABC" song to me on my birthday. The child can even carry a tune. Sort of.
She later did an encore by counting to 10. Again, she did the short version as there were several numbers omitted. Then we played hide-and-seek over the phone. No, we don't have camera phones. This Grandma stuff gets more challenging every day! It's a good thing she giggles when she hides or I never would have "found" her.
Later that evening my baby brother called and I told him about it because I thought it was cute. So he called his 11-year-old son over, handed him the phone and told him to sing the "ABC" song to his aunt.
My nephew is much more cooperative than my granddaughter so he started singing. The funny thing was I could hear my brother in the background singing along - and stumbling over the words, um ... letters. I almost fell off the couch because I was laughing so hard.
I will have to return the favor this weekend as the boy will turn 12 on Sunday. I still have to buy a birthday present or two for him but I won't see him for another couple of weeks when I go down there to visit so I still have time to shop.
One of my stops will be the bookstore. He is a fan of anime - those Japanese cartoons that are so popular these days. There are several book series that he likes. One called "Bleach" seems to be a favorite. They look like comic books in paperback form and are read from back to front. The bookstore calls them manga or mangia or something like that. It sounds strange but anything that gets a kid to read is well worth the money spent.
Birthday songs that don't mention birthdays and books that are read backwards are minor changes in "the way things have always been done." I have found that if one can adapt to evolving circumstances with grace and good humor then everybody is much happier.
It has been said that the only constant is change and I have found that to be true. Technology is changing the world so fast that it is hard to keep up. Improvements to favorite products appear on the shelves even before we have managed to figure out the old ones and "the way things have always been done" is never a justification for resisting an improvement in our lives.
Luckily, young people seem to embrace change as much as we ... ahem ... older people resist it. I confess to resisting such things as answering machines, cell phones, and plastic bags, to name a few.
I think that our ability to adapt to a changing environment is one of the things that sets the human race apart from the rest of the animal world. That, and our propensity for killing each other, but that is another subject.
I enjoy changes that take the form of odd birthday songs and backward books. The innocence of youth is always surprising and refreshing. I wonder what she will come up with next year?
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She wanted to sing the "ABC" song. So she did. It was the short version as she left out quite a few of the letters. I loved it. I have never had anyone sing the "ABC" song to me on my birthday. The child can even carry a tune. Sort of.
She later did an encore by counting to 10. Again, she did the short version as there were several numbers omitted. Then we played hide-and-seek over the phone. No, we don't have camera phones. This Grandma stuff gets more challenging every day! It's a good thing she giggles when she hides or I never would have "found" her.
Later that evening my baby brother called and I told him about it because I thought it was cute. So he called his 11-year-old son over, handed him the phone and told him to sing the "ABC" song to his aunt.
My nephew is much more cooperative than my granddaughter so he started singing. The funny thing was I could hear my brother in the background singing along - and stumbling over the words, um ... letters. I almost fell off the couch because I was laughing so hard.
I will have to return the favor this weekend as the boy will turn 12 on Sunday. I still have to buy a birthday present or two for him but I won't see him for another couple of weeks when I go down there to visit so I still have time to shop.
One of my stops will be the bookstore. He is a fan of anime - those Japanese cartoons that are so popular these days. There are several book series that he likes. One called "Bleach" seems to be a favorite. They look like comic books in paperback form and are read from back to front. The bookstore calls them manga or mangia or something like that. It sounds strange but anything that gets a kid to read is well worth the money spent.
Birthday songs that don't mention birthdays and books that are read backwards are minor changes in "the way things have always been done." I have found that if one can adapt to evolving circumstances with grace and good humor then everybody is much happier.
It has been said that the only constant is change and I have found that to be true. Technology is changing the world so fast that it is hard to keep up. Improvements to favorite products appear on the shelves even before we have managed to figure out the old ones and "the way things have always been done" is never a justification for resisting an improvement in our lives.
Luckily, young people seem to embrace change as much as we ... ahem ... older people resist it. I confess to resisting such things as answering machines, cell phones, and plastic bags, to name a few.
I think that our ability to adapt to a changing environment is one of the things that sets the human race apart from the rest of the animal world. That, and our propensity for killing each other, but that is another subject.
I enjoy changes that take the form of odd birthday songs and backward books. The innocence of youth is always surprising and refreshing. I wonder what she will come up with next year?
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