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Tainted Perceptions
Perception, it effects us all in so many little ways. Sometimes those effects are obvious. Other times it takes years to understand the impacts. Like it or not, we are more often than not judged upon the perception of who and what we are. A week or so ago, Dan wrote a post about Love Me, Love my Bike that touched on the subject. Perception has associated his bike as part and parcel of who Dan is. At the time, it didn't strike a chord with me.
Over the weekend I had a light bulb moment though. Saturday, my older brother was over. He had dropped his truck off for service and it was going to be there for a week or so. He was headed out to Los Angeles for the week and was just going to take is motorcycle to the airport. Our parents had issues and concerns with him riding to the airport with a suitcase and laptop bag on his motorcycle. No big deal, it wasn't worth a fight, so I tossed him the keys to my Smart car and had him take that for the week. I tend to ride whenever I can anyways, and not having a car for the week just enforces it.
Ward Cleaver I am not
Growing up, I remember watching a bunch of Leave it to Beaver on rainy days. Back then I looked at my own parents and saw subtle changes from the idyllic family portrayed in the show, but when I look around at families today, I see a vastly different picture.
The Cleaver family has given way to the Dr. Phil Generation, and the modern family is suffering for it. I say this as I look both at my own family, and those around me.
Expectations and roles in the family have been so completely altered in the last 50 years that the role models we look at in the past are bordering in irrelevant. Looking back, we had this image of the stay at home mother and home maker that did the laundry, the cleaning, the cooking and largely raised the kids on her own, while the husband worked, provided an income, and assisted with the kids to very limited degree.
30 years ago when my parents went through this, the expectations upon my father and his peers included more time with the family and other household tasks, but even then it was still more Ward Cleaver than Mr. Mom. When I was a teen, the Micheal Keaton movie, "Mr. Mom' came out, and so many people found it funny.
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