{"id":839,"date":"2004-12-12T16:23:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-12T16:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2004\/12\/12\/839\/"},"modified":"2004-12-12T16:23:00","modified_gmt":"2004-12-12T16:23:00","slug":"839","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=839","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jimgworld.com\/beta\/gav.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n<p>The Christmas season is definitely under way, and if there&#8217;s any reason why we go thru all this silliness, it must be for kids. Christmas is a gift to kids from adults. And that&#8217;s nice, when you think about it.<\/p>\n<p>I myself am not a &#8220;natalist&#8221;; I didn&#8217;t have any kids and don&#8217;t want to have any kids. In my younger day, I was open minded about kids; I might have started a family, had the right person come along. I put in some years as a Sunday school teacher and youth minister at two different churches, and I hung out with families that had kids. So I got my fill of being around &#8217;em.<\/p>\n<p>I found out that I just wasn&#8217;t wired to be a kid&#8217;s kind of person. Admittedly, they&#8217;re precious in many ways, and I&#8217;d never want to hurt them. But after a while, they&#8217;re just too &#8230; too &#8230; too childish. The childishess is cute for a while, but it just doesn&#8217;t let up. I went through the 4 PM &#8220;arsenic hour&#8221; a couple of times, when you&#8217;re ready for a nap and the kid you&#8217;re with just keeps on bouncing around.<\/p>\n<p>So I don&#8217;t think I would have done well as a parent. Truth is, I really wasn&#8217;t so keen on kids even when I was a kid! Reaching the age of 20 and going to college was an immense relief to me &#8212; it was like emerging from a dark world of irrationality.<\/p>\n<p>But OK, let me give kids their due. They can be quite creative. And thus the painting above, from a 2 or 3 year old named Gavin. I dated Gavin&#8217;s mom for a few months back in 1992. She gave me the boot on Thanksgiving Day, right after the big family meal. I don&#8217;t know what ever happened to them; last I heard, they moved to Alaska. Anyway, about a month before that fateful afternoon, Gavin had his water colors out and gave me this. Quite colorful, I thought.<\/p>\n<p>Well, Gav must be in his teens by now. Hope he&#8217;s been developing his artistic talents. Hope his mom eventually found him a step dad who gives him the attention he deserves. Hope Gav has a nice Christmas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Christmas season is definitely under way, and if there&#8217;s any reason why we go thru all this silliness, it must be for kids. Christmas is a gift to kids from adults. And that&#8217;s nice, when you think about it. I myself am not a &#8220;natalist&#8221;; I didn&#8217;t have any kids and don&#8217;t want to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}