What Are Parents?
Parents are peculiar people. Nearly any teenager will testify to that. At intervals they are fun; sometime they are sadness; occasionally they are stern: often they are lax; infrequently they are wise; usually they are dumb; but after awhile they are happiness and contentment.
Parents have a reason for all these emotions and more often than not, children- - -especially teen-agers ---influence them more than anything else. They realize that what their boys and girls are and will be, depends largely upon them. And, right or wrong, what their boys and girls do, will reflect upon them.
Parents can be fun when they have no outstanding worries pressing at the time. Their bills are all paid and they have a little left over. No grievous decisions are hanging over them concerning what to do. They have no boys in Vietnam and their girls are not yet over yonder in another city. So, they can be fun.
Parents are sadness when they hear the news telling that somebody's boys, perhaps teen-agers, have been killed or are missing in action in foreign wars. It could be their boy and they are sad in another parent's place. They read where a boy and a girl, just for kicks---never thinking---go off and spend a night together and then are killed in a too-fast car---and they are sad---for the kids that didn't think it could happen to them, and for other parents who share an empty place and a sordid memory. It might have been their kids. They hear of all the bad things happening to teen-agers - - -drinking, doping, perversions, illicit sex, chicken games, etc.---and they are---sadness.
Parents are stern only occasionally when it looks like nothing else will work. Parents are lax when they have been hounded so long their resistance is at a low ebb. Parents are wise when they can give the answers to the teen-agers that they want to hear. But parents usually give the wrong answers---so they are dumb?
Parents, though, are happiness. Their teen-agers, in spite of everything, have grown up. Now they, too, have become parents. Now they know what all these emotions are. And the parents are grandparents---their boys and girls are fine God-fearing men and women. They did NOT become convicts and prostitutes! They did not develop into welfare bums and drunken sots! They are all that we wanted them to be- - -and we - - -parents are- - -HAPPINESS !
-Box 1294 Crane, Texas