I overheard two mothers discussing the end of the college year and one remarked, “My son just had two weeks of stressful exams so now he’s taking it easy for a couple of weeks to relax and regenerate.”
I would like all of you who are my age or older to close your eyes for a minute and hear yourselves saying to your parents, “Mom, Dad, I’ve just finished my exams, I’m quite stressed, so for the next two weeks I’ll be sleeping in, maybe going to the beach a few times and just regenerating.”
When the school year came to a close on Friday, I was expected to be working on Monday. Saturday would have even been better.
I lived at home for a couple of years after graduating, but I paid rent for my room, worked around the yard and house and I don’t recall sleeping in very often.
When this young man is working and he finishes a project, he may be a bit surprised to find that his boss doesn’t give him two weeks off, he gives him another project. That goes on and on for many years and he should be prepared for that.
A lady named Becky Blades wrote her daughter an advice letter as she was leaving for college. It was her last ditch effort to tell her daughter all the things she should know about being out on her own. It was a collection of the little things she had forgotten to pass on to her daughter while she was at home.
Her daughter convinced her Mom she should expand on the advice and put it into a book. So her mother wrote a book titled, “Do Your Laundry or You’ll Die Alone.”
She gives tips on everything from finance to cooking, all numbered in easy to remember, text sized messages, the way young people read and communicate today.
I was pretty well prepared when I left home. I knew how to use the stove and the washing machine. I could sew on a button and I knew how to balance a cheque book and pay my monthly bills. I was taught to look someone in the eye and give them a firm handshake when I first met them and to listen to their name when they offered it. I was recently introduced to a young man who was looking at his cell phone and I never did catch his name.
But, has he ever been taught to act any differently?
We were bringing on a crop of rookies at the fire hall one night and they had to fill out forms and one of the questions was asking them the neck size of their shirts.
One of them was puzzled by this and took out his cellphone to call his Mom. I asked him to hang up and took him to the lockers where the shirts were and told him to figure it out himself. After all, he wanted to save lives.
We seldom sit around the kitchen table any more, passing along our wisdom and telling family stories, everyone is in a hurry. There is the old saying, “He may be college smart, but is he street smart?”
Finding the balance is the key, but asking someone to sew a button on a sleeve might tell you a lot at a job interview.
At least that’s what McGregor says.
