Comments on: Old friends, old habits

By: Arp

Arp — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 22:00:37 +0000

My parents make a brilliant lamb curry, while my personal fave is a grilled lambchop with salt, pepper & brown sugar. Or salt, pepper and rosemary. With the fat a little crispy, er, crunchy.

When my parents took me out of school and we went to India for months, I spent a LOT of time with adults of all kinds. Small business owners, family friends, artists, neo-marxist intellectuals (Kolkata is THE hotbed of marxist intellectualism in India). I could converse with adults as easily as with kids my own age.

Interestingly when I grew older, I could play and entertain younger kids easily too. Dunno if that’s related or not.

PS Flattery will get you everywhere. Or almost everywhere.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:19:47 +0000

And that “fat and good”/BTO comment is sheer genius.

By: Jeffrey

Jeffrey — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 19:19:19 +0000

Mmm…. bacon. And mmm… lamb. I do a great seared lamb chop with mint salt and balsamic vinegar. Don’t know that I need to butcher my own lamb, but that’s more a judgement on my carving skills than a need to hide the origin of my food. I can clean and carve fish and chicken, but not well at all.

You make a good point about the separation of generations. There’s too much of a tendency to separate yourself from anything that appears “different”, whether by age or politics. I think people are forgetting how to get along with people who disagree with you, and it’s tempting to pin some of the blame on those gulfs between generations… If you can’t relate to someone who’s on a different level of the social hierarchy, it’s got to be easy to dismiss their viewpoint.

Jeffrey’s last blog post..CSI: Miami

By: Arp

Arp — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 06:01:24 +0000

I did forget to mention another fulfilling evening that I had recently, when one of our fellow unschooling families came over for an evening. Just being able to talk normally about shared experiences is a nice thing.

@Summer: ‘Close as family’ is a good point. As a product of a popular culture that espoused and still espouses the separation of youths and elders, I created a surrogate family of friends. At least that’s how I see it now. I suppose it makes sense that since I have an actual family that the surrogates became apparent as shallow facsimiles of family.

@Trish: We don’t have to tell the kids that the bacon is real. Or why eggs taste better when fried in bacon fat. Or why ‘fat & good’ applies to both bacon and Bachman Turner Overdrive.

By: Summer

Summer — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 05:01:27 +0000

You’ve definitely touched on something real here. I’ve severed so many old friendships since becoming a parent. People that once were as close as family became strangers that I really didn’t like very well.

Summer’s last blog post..My Weekly Roundup