Please, please, don't eat the daisies!!!

That's such a sweet little scene from a movie, isn't it? Can you imagine ADULTS paying good money to watch something like that? Tell me that things weren't much more innocent when I was in kindergarten...I wore dresses just like these when I was a kid. I never had pig tails, I would fall asleep with gum in my hair too often and I was a tomboy anyway. But I do remember doing silly little dances like this one where you start of in a group of your own kind and then someone tells you to watch the leader and "Do what she does!" Then, before you know it you're next to the boys.

The only thing here that seems ridiculous to me is the fact that Day was at a school wearing BLUE JEANS! I never saw a woman wear blue jeans until much later in life. If I found out that I was the first to wear them, I wouldn't be the least surprised. At the time this movie was made, no woman would have left the house without a dress on, certainly not to a school!

We girls had to wait until some law was passed during my 6th or 7th grade that made it illegal to force girls to wear dresses while allowing boys to wear pants. It didn't mean much to me at that point, I didn't have any pants. I had one ugly pair of blue jeans that were red, white and blue and said USA VOTE up and down the sides. Even at 11, I knew that those jeans wouldn't exactly win friends and influence people. I wore sunsuits and shorts to play in and geeky play pants that wouldn't have been acceptable school attire at that time.

In kindergarten, 1963, there was another little girl named Margaret in my class. For some reason, she kept wearing shorts to school. Looking back, I imagine that her family didn't have the money to buy her proper clothes. But that didn't stop the teacher from tugging on my skirt as she scolded the little thing. "Wear skirts like THIS Margaret wears!" she sternly told that 5 year old who probably wondered how to solve a problem like that all by her self. Even then I felt sorry for her although I didn't realize how cruel the teacher, an adult, was being. But I remember thinking how bad she must have felt when the whole class, lined up in the girls line and the boys line, was witness to the teacher's inappropriate behavior. And, now, I recognize it for just that. There was no reason to put such a responsibility on a little girl who probably couldn't have even repeated the teacher's warning to her mother, much less reach the hangers in her closet.

Sometime shortly after this movie was made, all hell broke loose in America and no one cared what little girls wore to school anymore. I would imagine that teachers such as my kindergarten teacher brought about that particular change when the little "Margaret's" grew up and were told that they could not only be a teacher, they could be the BOSS of the teachers...and the people who make the laws. I guess that's a good thing.

But in an attempt to assuage the self esteem of little children everywhere, they seem to have thrown out the baby with the bath water but that water long ago went under the bridge. People have explained the loosening of our value system and contemplated the causes ad nauseum. Was it when they baned prayer in school? Was it television? Could it have been Rock and Roll? Or was it that law in the 70 that made girls and boys equal? No longer did we go to home economics classes while the boys went to industrial arts...and I wonder if it's even an option to avoid one where both are offered. Things certainly changed somewhere along the line.

It was very interesting to be in the all girls home-ec class and then be thrust into a world where society told you that girls could be whatever they wanted to be. But if someone a bit closer to home didn't tell those girls, what good did the information do for them? We were trained to be housewives and then we found ourselves in a world were women actually worked and were almost expected to do so.

When I was a kid, I had one of the only working mothers on the block. I felt weird because of that. I felt even weirder when I wanted to stay at home with my youngest as he finished high school. It was my last chance to mother and I wanted to take full advantage of it. Imagine my surprise when my son asked me, embarrassed, "What do I tell my friends when they ask what my mother does?" He was humiliated to have a stay at home mom. I told him to tell his friends that I was his dirty underpants if they had to know what I did.

Television couldn't have been an evil influence if the children had no access to endless hours of sitting in front of the boob tube. Rock and Roll couldn't have been a problem to young men who were busy mowing lawns while they listened to it. Removing prayer from school wasn't a problem if you still took your kids to church on Sunday.

I think the kids were ready for the change, but the parents weren't. Some of them might have allowed a bit more winsome behavior than did other parents but a lot of parents were still working on the "Children are to be seen and not heard" school of child rearing. They say things like, "Dr. Spock ruined an entire generation." It takes a while to adjust to the change and I think we can do it. We simply have to identify the problem first. I don't want to learn to speak Chinese.

As I watched the Olympics Sunday evening, I was quite heartened by the men's swimming team. As long as we still have young people who can pull off amazing feats like the ones they pulled off Sunday night, I feel much better for our nation's future.

I think we'll be OK. But first we have to remember to tell our kids that they CAN be whatever they want to be. We have to tell them how good they are so they will believe that they can do whatever they want to be. And then, with all of the love and pride that we can muster, we need to nurture and challenge our kids while keeping them away from TV and a sedentary lifestyle.

I honestly believe that if we continue to challenge our kids with love, and if we encourage them to find things to do that will be more productive than watching TV...we can continue to be the greatest nation in the history of this planet.

:)

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