Who Do You Think You Are?

My dad would ask me this quite a bit growing up. Sometimes because as kids and growing up we can be really … well, really, a horse's butt in two parts, so trust me when I got disciplined it was justified! But you know, I often felt as though I had to be bad to earn the approval of those around me – but those I grew up with must have grown out of that faster than me, for by the time I tried to be a rebel, it just wasn't “cool” to be one any more. That comes to mind both as our daughter Sarah got so sullen and raging this morning – enough for me to say she's not SUPPOSED to be a sullen teenager yet – and our son Jeffrey in his eagerness to be a Cub Scout (we picked up his uniform Saturday and Martha got in a snit because she wasn't with me to do it, I think) will ignore what we his parents ask him to do in his zeal to get ahead and this will also be the title for Sunday's play in rotation Sunday school Parable Playhouse. About David and Goliath. That I need to write.

Saturday, besides being the final day of Norsk Hostfest here in Minot, was the day Sarah, Jeffrey, and I went to the Boy Scouts' semi-annual sale here in Minot of the various paraphernalia that a Scout needs. And Jeffrey was really excited about picking up the Cub Scout shirt, the patches we'll have to sew on (there is an adhesive Badge Magic we can use, but I had to return that this morning because we ended up short over the weekend because we had to buy some medicine for Sarah when she went to the hospital Saturday for her asthma), and the Tiger Cub manual. He looks really good in it, and this is a uniform he will grow into over a few years, which we were told to shop for! Sarah was still able to come to church Sunday – she got home with Martha about 21 minutes after midnight – where atypical for us we arrived first for Sunday school and then for worship service! We needed the sleep, believe me!

And is it just me or are the weekends getting longer and longer? I used to think I would not complain since I work during the week, but the kids getting in growth spurts (again) and getting made to feel like even when I'm with them I don't do enough or that what I feel is essential my wife doesn't want me interfering with … little wonder that I spend so much time here recording – particularly lately – not so much the people I meet as the books I read. I think I knew that The Neverending Story was based on a book (a 1983 translation of a German-language novel by Michael Ende, ISBN 0385176228) but I did not know that the novel itself combines elements of the first two movies. And unlike what I remember of the movies, the book isn't that humongous a change besides the land of Fantasia in the movie being Fantastica in the book. And it's implied that the bookstore where Bastian picked up and ran off with The Neverending Story is owned by someone who went through this when he was a kid.

 

But that … is another story, David