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Loss of innocence
Dec. 5th, 2011 09:24 amI have forgotten how to blog.
Really. I've tried a few times, but the flow of words I had before is now mostly a trickle.
So I apologize for that.
My youngest nephew turned 15 last week. I've known him for 7.5 years - since he was 7.5! Ha! For most of that time he has been obsessed with Star Wars things. Birthday and Christmas presents mostly were Star Wars themed items - movies, video games, books, action figures, legos, etc. (Except that first year I gave him a book about the Edmund Fitzgerald as he said he enjoyed a trip to that museum that year.) At his birthday this year, I was talking with him and he said that he was reading more and enjoying spy novels (especially with kids being the spies) and was interested in WWII.
I immediately thought of giving him Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I was 17 or 18 when I first read it. It had a profound impact on my entire view of life and thinking.
Which is what scares me. I had a propensity of depression anyway, and I can't imagine that reading Vonnegut helped at all. And I worry that I'd be negatively influencing him to have those same kinds of depressed thoughts.
Well, I was at the local used bookstore buying Xmas gifts and got Craig Slaughterhouse Five and a book about WWII spies. But I'm hesitant to actually give him this one.
I think it is fear of his loss of innocence. Or, maybe more truthfully, fear of loss of my belief of his innocence.
He hunts and fishes and shoot squirrels in the garden, so I guess he isn't really all that "innocent" in that way. But I'm still hesitant.
(For the record, it took me three tries to finish this blog. I am very out of practice.)
Really. I've tried a few times, but the flow of words I had before is now mostly a trickle.
So I apologize for that.
My youngest nephew turned 15 last week. I've known him for 7.5 years - since he was 7.5! Ha! For most of that time he has been obsessed with Star Wars things. Birthday and Christmas presents mostly were Star Wars themed items - movies, video games, books, action figures, legos, etc. (Except that first year I gave him a book about the Edmund Fitzgerald as he said he enjoyed a trip to that museum that year.) At his birthday this year, I was talking with him and he said that he was reading more and enjoying spy novels (especially with kids being the spies) and was interested in WWII.
I immediately thought of giving him Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I was 17 or 18 when I first read it. It had a profound impact on my entire view of life and thinking.
Which is what scares me. I had a propensity of depression anyway, and I can't imagine that reading Vonnegut helped at all. And I worry that I'd be negatively influencing him to have those same kinds of depressed thoughts.
Well, I was at the local used bookstore buying Xmas gifts and got Craig Slaughterhouse Five and a book about WWII spies. But I'm hesitant to actually give him this one.
I think it is fear of his loss of innocence. Or, maybe more truthfully, fear of loss of my belief of his innocence.
He hunts and fishes and shoot squirrels in the garden, so I guess he isn't really all that "innocent" in that way. But I'm still hesitant.
(For the record, it took me three tries to finish this blog. I am very out of practice.)
