If only...

If only life were so easy...

When you are a kid, you never know how your life is gonna be. Yet your life is totally planned for you. When you are fed. Your clothes and color of them. Even your most private moments like going to the restroom or bathing. You like TV and music but only like it because you are told to like it. Then you're forced into the institution of public school where you are programmed like the rest of your peers. Math, Reading, Spelling, History and Science. We all learn the same things at virtually the same time. You have friends that were introduced to you by the neighbors or your family. Each kid, hand picked by your parents. Yes, they choose your friends, plan your social activities and control when you have fun. They even pick your hobbies like baseball, piano lessons, and karate classes. They even pick your religion for you, tell you what God to believe in and control your morality.

And then as you get little bit older things change. You are in this in between time in life. High School. Except for your basic ciriculum that every High Schooler takes, your social skills take a dramatic turn towards freedom. You may still have that control of your social life by your parents but you now develop the freedom of choice and with that comes consequences. You miss that homework assignment or that class project and there are consequences. Or you have begun to excel at a hobby like sports or music and with that comes even more responsibility: Your are given to fly. Your friends are now your friends only by choice. You now are discovering the morality you learned a few years back. Some have a lack of... It may be you.

Then the day of freedom comes. Graduation day. School as you know it, public socialism is gone. You are no longer the responsibility of the state. But very much still the responsibility of your parents no matter when your year of sufferage is. All that protection, the coddling, the structured life program, ends on one choice: To go to college or get a job. You have got to do something productive or you'll continue to live in suspension in your parents attic. Either way, it is here where life begins and where Darwin was correct. You must survive or fail. But it's still your choice.

But really happens is you fall into something. A major in college, a job at a local hardware store, a position at the local neighborhood grill, the military or scoop ice cream at the local soda fountain. You hit a groove. It's either a lot of fun or its a nightmare. College isn't easy and neither is scooping ice cream all day. You plot your way to get out of the groove, your dream of bigger and better things, but then again, no one scoops ice cream as well as you and you got an A minus on an accounting midterm by doing something you should have learned but never really did in public school. You studied. You did it better. And now you manage the company that sells the ice cream to the store ya worked at. You sell ice cream for a living? Just after you've cut your hair, replaced your Doc Martens for Clarks and those jeans for slacks. The Metallica poster is still on the wall but you listen to Dido too. You've even picked your political party, your own religion and a great wine to have with Thanksgiving turkey and now feel like the oldest one at a Social Distortion concert!

Then life hits ya right upside the head. You find a girl. The girl likes you. And you love the girl. So you take her to Liverpool and she accepts your hand. You find a house, buy a car get a cat and a dog and a few more cats and learn what Bed Bath and Beyond is. And everything just went by so fast! But then...

You find out you're gonna be a Dad (yes, seriously). And you hope you are as good of a parent as the one's you have.

If only...