Ho! Ho! Ho! (Just in case….)
We “middle-class” parents (and by “middle-class,” I mean everyone in the lower 99% of Americans, whose income has barely increased at all since 1980, in contrast to the top 1% [and in contrast to CEOs, whose income is UP] and ABOVE the poverty line), must be teaching our children to “hedge their bets” and “cover all possibilities.”
I say that after receiving TWO letters to Santa today, from some first graders with whom I worked! No, I was not wearing a red suit and impersonating Santa. I WAS wearing harness boots and blue jeans, for safety in riding my motorcycle. Perhaps, any middle-aged man with a white beard could have been the recipient of the Santa letters – I just don’t know. 
I told one of the children that I would have to talk to my elves. Perhaps the kids just thought it safer to cover the remote possibility that Santa would visit them while “out of uniform” and under an assumed name.
I can’t think of many people who know me who would refer to me as “a right jolly old elf!”
In any case, the letters warmed my heart! Kids at that age are almost incorrigibly honest (don’t worry, society teaches them to lie later on) and very sincere and open. They are also very perceptive, much more so than many adults, who have become numb. When you receive a card from a first grader (I received one of those, too, with a picture of a giraffe!), the child means what the card says.
So… what do the Santa letters tell us about the kids, and their dreams?
Well, one child wanted a laptop (that would have to be Macintosh! Why “help a good kid to go bad?”), and an iPod, and a phone! Another child apologized for wanting a laptop (I’ll say! ) and wanted a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game with a Game Cube!
I think that, from the wish list, we middle-class Americans have taught our children to “DREAM BIG!” After all, why not? Some of their dreams will be dashed by hard reality soon enough – why not dream passionately NOW?
Perhaps my experience today should really be a lesson for the parents of the children, and for other adults. Perhaps we should ALSO be dreaming passionately right now. After all, the clock is ticking. Some estimates for tipping points in global warming are as little as seven years out. There is a major change in the political environment in the United States scheduled for next month (although government “as usual” seems to be happening in Illinois). Can a change in the physical environment be too far behind?
One of the joys of working with honest children (as opposed to a FEW adult “wastes of perfectly good carbon” that I met in high tech) is that the kids fill you with their infectious optimism and a fresh view that all things are possible!
And why not? They are! (At least MOST of them….)
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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