I don\u2019t have kids.\u00a0\u00a0 So I watch my friends raise theirs with no real experience on my part, or prejudice or preconceived notions of how I would go about it.\u00a0 Child rearing for me is like sex is to a eunuch.\u00a0 Course, I don\u2019t know a whole lot about eunuching either.<\/p>\n
Billy Jean lived a couple houses south of us.\u00a0 Her husband Robert and her were wild kids, even when they got married.\u00a0 Small town wild.\u00a0 Drugs, sex, drinking, penny-ante thefts, racing in the streets — they pretty much had it covered.\u00a0 But when Billy Jean got pregnant, well, she knew it was time to slow down some, take a little responsibility, maybe gear up for adulthood.\u00a0 By the second kid she was sure<\/i><\/b> it was time and hey, Robbie too!\u00a0 So by the time Peggy Sue Star was born, Robert had a full time job at Twin City Foods driving lift truck, they\u2019d quit drinking and smoking herb, they joined the Little Chapel in the Ravine and received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior \u2026 and they avoided me as best they could.<\/p>\n
Billy Jean had some definite ideas how to raise her children.\u00a0 She never let them out of her sight and she never let them play with other kids would no doubt contaminate them with bad habits.\u00a0 When it came time for school, she home schooled them, which was hard, considering she and Robbie had pretty much partied past learning anything in high school themselves, but for the first 6 grades, she could manage to study up.<\/p>\n
Like all child rearing, I guess, it was an interesting experiment.\u00a0 Very hands ON.\u00a0 Versus, oh, my own kidhood where we\u2019d roam the woods and the neighborhood with other kids, fight, play baseball, shoot marbles, build treehouses, ride bikes, all pretty much unsupervised.\u00a0 \u201cBe home by \u2026.\u201d Mom would command and vhrooom, we were gone til then.<\/p>\n
Billy Jean and Robert broke up awhile back.\u00a0 For the third time.\u00a0 This one\u2019s for good, I suspect.\u00a0 Peggy Sue Star married an army guy, got pregnant, divorced, and now lives with her two kids with Billy Jean.\u00a0 Randall, the son, quit speaking to his father years ago and he moved away to Utah.\u00a0 Robbie\u2019s a mess.\u00a0 Quit Jesus and decided to try his hand at casino gambling.\u00a0 Last I heard he was dead broke, deep in debt, drinking again and living in a trailer up river.<\/p>\n
If you thought I\u2019d wrap this up with a ribbon and a bow, maybe pontificate on how to raise kids the proper way, you\u2019d be optimistic.\u00a0 I do think kids ought to play with other kids, go to school with other kids, live a little dangerously so they\u2019ll grow up before they\u2019re 35 or 40.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure you can really protect them the way Billy Jean tried.\u00a0 But I suspect you can OVER-protect them.\u00a0 Then again, I think eunuchs are a misunderstood minority.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
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I don\u2019t have kids.\u00a0\u00a0 So I watch my friends raise theirs with no real experience on my part, or prejudice or preconceived notions of how I would go about it.\u00a0 Child rearing for me is like sex is to a eunuch.\u00a0 Course, I don\u2019t know a whole lot about eunuching either. Billy Jean lived a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4894,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4893\/revisions\/4894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}