Currently reading The Book Borrower by Alice Mattison. No review thus far since I'm only on page 18, but I found a particular line to be interesting on page 7. "Her mother hadn't said the right things; or was dead; or had never existed, so that Ruben had to be made by committee from glossy scraps of magazine ads." It struck me because it's a colorful analogy so I lingered on it for a moment. But I'm also reading this book called The Overspent American by Juliet B. Schor mentions a study that was done that shows that parents who spend less time with their children will buy them more gifts, compared to parents who are with their children more often, who spend less money on them. It's got like a billion other interesting stories and facts in it about how Westerners have enslaved themselves to money and material goods, I highly recommend it. Anyways, back to the committee of magazines ads forming a person. Imagine the message that spending money instead of time must send a child. Consider where their primary education is coming from if not parents. In all cases, children {and adults alike} learn from a variety of resources. But what if a parent/loving guardian isn't around or doesn't care to combat all the misinformation? Kids end up learning all sorts of nastiness, and maybe someone else like a teacher, pastor, or friend might clue them in, maybe they figure it out on their own the hard way, or maybe they don't. Maybe the child grows up equating love with money spent! Later, various media outlets teaches them that sex also equals love, that nothing is good enough and next thing you know you've got a generation of perpetually-unsatisfied, materialistic whores! So spend your time loving and teaching your children before they turn into degenerate patchwork quilts of debt-ridden STD's!
Did I forget to take my Effexor today?
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