Shadow hasn't seen me all day, so while I was sitting here she voluntarily climbed onto my shoulders and is currently snuggled there, quite happy. This is the first time she's done this on her own and wanted to stay there. I think I'm making progress. =D Always wanted to train a cat to sit on my shoulders behind my neck.
Last night, our dog followed my father upstairs, and my father told him that he might as well just go back downstairs and sit on the couch with me, and shortly thereafter he's hopping up on the couch beside me. =P
And now my post title takes on a sardonic meaning.
The other night my sisters brought up a sore subject with me. Both of them are in high school, now, and they're in the same math subject (Algebra 2 honors), and one of them is in the band Guard and the other (the sophomore) is a field commander. Both of these are very time-demanding; they have to stay until five-thirty on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays (guard on Mon and Thur but the youngest sits and does homework until it's time to come home), and of course they have other subject homework on top of that.
They said recently that they would love it if we all quit playing on Sunday mornings in the worship section because they need the time on Wednesday nights to do homework, because otherwise they don't have time.
My first reaction was, actually, "fine". See, I was like them for a while; my father plunked us all into the ensemble (which consists of essentially my father, me, and my siblings, with various other people) after we'd had a year or so experience playing, and I got to where I loved it. First thing I did when I moved to college was seek out a solid church (theologically) who also had a strong worship ministry because if I don't play on Sunday mornings I feel like a part of me is missing. But I don't do it because I feel I have to. It's something I want to do, something I love to do, and quite honestly something I feel called to do.
So to my mind, if a person is involved with this kind of ensemble and they don't want to do it, and they don't get joy out of doing it, which seems to be the case for my sisters, then I see no reason for that person to stay involved. The point of leading in this situation is to want to lead, because if you don't look like you want to be there, no one else will respond to your leading. It's something you should have a desire for, something that should give you joy. Shouldn't feel like a burden, because it's not required.
My second reaction was "what the heck is your problem, freshmen?". I had to go through the exact same routine they went through, both band and math, and after my first year I had added a commitment to a local Youth Orchestra which necessitated a forty-five minute drive each way once a week. And I managed to have time to do everything and still go to bed at eleven (except for after Junior year, when I started following anime on [as]). The subject matter isn't that hard, and my sisters are not stupid. Intelligence is bred in this family. All I have going for me is I'm the firstborn.
The difference is this: back when I was in middle school, we were all restricted access to electronic stuff. I had thirty minutes of computer allowance per week, and so did my sisters. If I needed to write a paper I did so by hand, and then asked for the computer so I could type it and print it. And after I purchased my N64, I could use it all I wanted (because it was my money spent), but I could only use it with the television (which wasn't mine =P) for thirty minutes at a time, per day.
It wasn't until I lobbied (yes, me; my sisters had no drive to take part in this at all) for an increase to an hour a week, and then to daily access, at which point time shrunk down to thirty per diem again, that we got to use it regularly, and even then my two youngest sisters were in the middle of grade school and so had no reason to use the computer other than to play Reader Rabbit. (I didn't know of a whole lot to do on the computer aside from games, either. I often played LEGO Island and Star Trek Armada because those were cheap games. =P)
And then my father spent a year as an expatriate in Mexico, and my mother succumbed to a bout of don't argue with any sisters at all, so eventually all restrictions evaporated, though not completely. That didn't happen until I graduated and had spent a year at college. But while I was a junior and senior my parents trusted me to self-monitor (which I did because I like being trustworthy) and then they tried the same with my sisters.
Now, as I've watched my sisters during the past three years, they appear to regulate themselves as well. But then you start noticing their habits and sequences of stuff, and I liken them more to, say, how Indi views her entertainment. Play a game, read a book, watch some television, get online, shuffle, repeat. It's never anything consistent for any one length of time (except for maybe the internet, where they spend hours playing Farm Town or Restaurant City on facebook), but an accumulation of stuff that together adds up to starting a nasty stack of homework at nine-thirty at night, when they're tired and cranky and not in the best mood for thinking.
Remember how I played the "when I was your age" card up top, there? Right. I did kind of the same thing in Junior and Senior year. I knew how much homework I had to do and about how long it would take me, and often I didn't start in on it until eight or nine myself. But I never complained about having to stay up past eleven to get it done because when that happened it was not only my fault for starting it so late but also my fault for misjudging the amount of work there. (Plus, staying up until midnight meant I was awake for anime, remember?)
So I look at them whining about so much stuff to do and all I can say is "get off the computer, turn off the television, put your cell phones in a jar downstairs, and get your damned homework done first if you want to chillax for hours and not stay up really late". It's no one's fault but their own.
Told a friend of mine what they said (and only what they said, not my spin on it), and he told me "WHAT?? No. I had over seventy problems of math per night plus other stuff, and I still came every Wednesday night. Boo. Hiss." And then I reminded him about also being in the youth orchestra with me, though he took a three semester break from it and I went three years solid. (Principal trombone after a semester, what what.)
But they don't want to hear it. Half of it is because they know when I say things to them in these situations I'm typically right, but it's also because they don't want there to actually be something they can do to fix this, and they don't want to give up anything they already have as privileges. They just want the things that irritate them to go away without bothering to think "I can get through this, it's only temporary" or consigning themselves to limit their activities. Or in their words, "I have friends. Have you ever had any?"
Tell them they can't use the computer at all and they have a fit. (Whereas you don't tell me I can't use the computer and instead you password it and tell everyone in the house except me, and I still don't complain because far be it from me to get mad over someone feeling like being petty and childish will keep them in power over me, slash not-at-all-bitter. =P)
Actually, I'm halfway debating ceasing to help them with math homework any more. They at least have each other to bounce ideas off of. I didn't have a phone so I didn't have any friends to call when I got stuck, and I surpassed the mathematical knowledge of both of my parents when I entered high school. I had no one. I had to teach my fracking self. (Plus my second sister is demonstrating a clear tendency to not care about understanding an assignment so long as it gets done; just yesterday she was writing a report on George Washington Carver and was asking my mother what she should write about next in the "decide how to do this for me" tone, and not the "please help I'm not sure what I'm doing" tone. Same with her math; when she asks me for help, she doesn't want to hear the explanation or the reasons, she wants the correct answer and she wants me to give it to her and she wants me to shut up. And that's not how I work.)
And it doesn't help that my father, after having been back in the states for, what, the fifth year now?, still seems like he's afraid he's lost any influence over his household and will go the route of "stop provoking the situation" instead of "resolve the situation" because resolving the situation requires conflict. Maybe I was wrong to give my parents as little trouble as possible. Maybe I should have let them learn how to be fracking decisive about stuff instead of this, which amounts to smoothing over the surface while the mire beneath roils and heaves.
I hate that kind of solution. It solves nothing.
