When I was a kid, I would send a self-addressed stamped envelope off for anything that could come to my house for free. If they wanted my info for a free subscription, I’d send it. If it was free-it was for me! I had an impressive catalog of magazines and pamphlets. When my sister wanted to learn about taxidermy, I had a magazine for it and a list of classes she could take. When my dad was looking for a new rifle or hunting accessory, I had tons of magazines for him to choose from. I had a tackle box full of free fishing lures and sometimes hats with company logos on them. Bumper stickers for days.  Have you ever wanted to take a trip to Colorado? Just so happens I had a pamphlet that could help you learn more. My entire music collection came from Columbia House and it only cost me a penny!  This was way before the digital era and before the word “spam” become popular.  I was the king of the junk mail!

We didn’t go anywhere really. We lived outside of our small town and about an hour from a big city.  It was too far to bike to town and we were too young to drive anywhere.  We got pretty good at entertaining ourselves once our chores were over.  We only had five TV channels (seven, if we knew Spanish), so sitting around and watching TV wasn’t really an option. Summers were chock full of chores and waiting for my mom and dad to get off work on Fridays. Our weekend fun consisted of loading up in the car, driving to a body of water (river, creek or lake), playing all day and driving back home wet, sunburned and tired.  If you asked me what summer was like when I was a kid, the previous sentence summed it up perfectly.  All my parents needed was a tank of gas, cooler full of beer, a bunch sandwiches and a road map.  That’s right kids!  A roadmap!  Dad would drive and mom would navigate because her thumb was the perfect width to represent 36 miles on a roadmap.  Ask your parents, they will know what I am talking about.   

The things you do to entertain yourself! The excitement of waiting for the mailman to show up around 11am to put mail in the box or grab the mail that you stamped to send off.  The mailman knew to do this because you had a little red flag on your box that would notify him that there was something going out.  Who mails anything anymore?  When I was a kid, this was the only way to get anything. How else would I get my free magazines or random piece of marketing?  The mailman was my conduit to the outside world!  The mailbox was my internet! The worst was when he would not show up at my expected time and we’d have to stare out the front window and wait.  Or worse!  When it was a holiday or he just didn’t show up!  All I wanted was to see something with my name on the front of the envelope.  I’d take anything.  My goal was to try to have something arrive every day during the summer.  When you are a rural kid and don’t have a lot going on in life, you make your own excitement.  Life is what you make of it.    

This isn’t a history lesson on my childhood or a chapter to prove how old and nostalgic I have become.  Like many of you, I have overcompensated for my childhood by giving my kids the world. I am not the old man shaking his fist at today’s youth.  I don’t piss and moan and start every sentence with the phrase “back in my day”.  It’s different.  The world has changed and our kids need different stimuli.   I knew what it was like to be “bored” and I laugh when my kids use the word.  My parents likely did the same for us kids. 

Actually, we never said “I’m bored” to my dad because he was the king of inventing a chore on the spot that would take you all afternoon to finish.  Have you ever rotated a pile of firewood?  Did your dad bring home scrap lumber from a construction job just for you to pull the nails out of it? My dad did!  This was his idea of “fun”.  If you said “I’m bored” to mom, she would say “go tell your father”.  In short, don’t be bored. 

About a year ago, my wife and I created “No technology Tuesdays and Thursdays”.  What is that you ask?  Two days out of the week, my kids have to unplug from chatting with their friends and mindless activities like watching other people play videogames on YouTube (it’s crazy that that is a thing).  They only get to use their technology for betterment.  My daughter is an artist, so she uses her technology to draw Anime. My son’s passion is to make movies, so he will create shows and stories with his iPad.  They use their time away from the web to pursue their passions and curiosities just like I used a pen and a stamp to see what the world would bring me. 

I want Erin and Sean to enjoy their days and surround themselves with their interests.  I want to give my children the luxury of discovery and not needlessly push them in directions or “haze” them because I had to experience certain things when I was the same age.  I also don’t want to make them soft because I didn’t push them the same way I was pushed.  They will get there, but they can do it when it’s their time. 

#Tryharder to have patience and allow life to come to them.  Don’t shove your kids harder than necessary.  As a kid that was forced to grow up too quick, I am pretty sensitive to the process.  Just because you experienced things the hard way or lived without certain opportunities or luxuries, doesn’t mean we have to force that upon the next generation.  By design, they are supposed to have it “easier”.    

Wait till I show them how to play video games with just a joystick and one red button.  It will blow their minds and bore them five minutes later.  I hope they tell me they’re bored.  I know where there’s an awesome stack of scrap lumber with nails that need pulling. 

Stand by!  I need to ask the wife when they had their last tetanus shot.  (I’m a dad.  It’s not my job to know these things!).