Archive for the ‘kids’ Tag
I love letters from kids regardless of the situation. They have an honesty that’s refreshing to say the least. As I recently cruised the web I discovered a web site that posted sample letters for adults to send to their kids at camp. I would hope that most parents just might be offended by the assumption that they’re too stupid to write a proper letter to their child. I ‘m also certain that if the kids received these cookie-cutter letters they would know just exactly what they were. They’re way more aware of things these days than we were.
No matter what parents say, they actually do miss their children when they’re attending summer camp. I would think that writing that first letter to your child after they’ve been away from home for a period of time would be tough. Not the letter itself but all the worrying you’ll do when your child has been out of touch for a few days or weeks. I certainly wouldn’t need assistance from some web site to communicate with my kid. Here are a few of the samples provided to assist any lazy parents in writing a freaking letter. They’ve even broken it down by age and sex of the child but for my purposes these two should be sufficient to make my point.
For a 10 Year Old Boy
Dear Xavier,
I miss you! I have been thinking about you a lot and all of the fun camp activities you’re involved in. Have you tried any new sports? When I went to summer camp, my favorite sport was "Monkey Soccer". Ask me about it when you get home.
I hope the food is okay. What is the favorite thing you’ve eaten so far? Have you done any funny camp skits? Or seen any funny camp pranks?
I hope you are having lots of fun. If you are having a hard day, please hang in there. Scruffy misses you too. I know he will want you to play fetch when you get home. We had some rain yesterday and he enjoyed getting muddy.
I love you bunches! See you in a few days!
Love,
Mom
For a 10 Year Old Girl
Dear Michelle,
How is camp? Have you made any neat crafts? Did you like horseback riding? I hope you are enjoying the activities!
I miss you lots! Be sure to take several photos so I can see what you did at camp. We can make a scrapbook together after you get home.
Have you played any fun games? I remember when I went to camp, my favorite was "Capture the Flag." I liked playing it with water balloons the best.
Fluffy missed you too. She slept on your bed last night, I think she will be happy when you come home.
I love you to the moon and back! See you next week!
Love,
Mom
I could show you many more examples but they just seem kind of lame to me. I remember attending camp as a kid and I wasn’t all that interested in receiving or sending letters anyway. I was having a great time and couldn’t be bothered. I assume that’s the case with most kids.
Just to give you a giggle or two here are some quotes from actual camp letters from kids to their parents. There are plenty available for viewing on the web and easy to find if your interested. Many books have also been written and are available from many Web book sellers. They are just too damned cute. Spelling and grammatical errors are included for your amusement.
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“Hey Mom! I’m having so much fun!! …I miss u! But this is so much better than u yelling at me, Joey and dad! (no offense)..love, Googie.”
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“Dear Mom and Dad, Our cabin is so dirty and unclean that this bacterial disease called Empitiga so far 4 people in our cabin have it under their armpits. I have it all over my face…”
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“A ginormous tree hit our cabin and knoked it down! When I was in it! No one got hurt, though. It was so scary! When the roof fell off our cabin everyone got soaked!… Love, Juliet. P.s. please do not be alarmed.”
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“Dear Mom and Dad, I love everything about this camp except the campers. Love, Sarina”
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“…they made me clean the table. I want to go home!…I stopped crying…But we have chores today. I am the Scraper, Sweeper and Maid.”
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“Dear Mom and Dad, This is not a camp from my dreams, it’s the 100th level of hell. I hate this stupid camp. I am getting out of here. Write me. I NEED MORE STAMPS. Save me!!! I am out of stamps.”
Camp is just another phase we’re forced to endure on our way to adulthood. I must say that the camping trips I took during my dating years were way better than summer camp. By then I was a little smarter about girls which made my continuing education much more interesting.
Why is it that we just love to entertain ourselves listening and watching young children. I suppose it’s their innocence and honesty so effortlessly projected. The recent rash of TV commercials containing one adult and four kids in a discussion group setting has captured everyone’s hearts. The honest answers coupled with their totally innocent facial expressions is priceless.
I understand the desire of businesses to use these kids for commercial purposes. If there were four or five adults sitting around talking most of us would click the remote and move on to things that were more interesting and believable. Adults are never perceived as being honest, especially those involved in the making of television commercials.
Over the years most commercials involving young kids and adults have not so subtly treated the adults like idiots. The kids are then shown as the smart and sensible members of the family. This kind of posturing plays right into the younger demographics but I always thought it was a little insulting to us adults. I readily admit that many adults are idiots but I always held out hope that it was just a small percentage.
This morning lying in bed in a semi-relaxed state I was quietly surfing the net when I came upon a number of sites listing actual letters from parents who were excusing their children from school. These samples reflect the actual wording and mis-spellings that those parents used. I’m sure the teachers who received these notes were as shocked as I was. It’s hard to understand how a reasonably intelligent parent would want their notes to the school to read this way. Enjoy them and then just slowly shake your head with your total lack of understanding as I did.
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Please excuse Pedro from being absent yesterday. He had (diahre) (dyrea) (direathe) the shits. [words in ( )’S were crossed out.]
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Sally won’t be in school a week from Friday. We have to attend her funeral.
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Please excuse little Jimmy for not being in school yesterday. His father is gone and I could not get him ready because I was in bed with the doctor.
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My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the Marines.
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Maryann was absent December 11-16, because she had a fever, sore throat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever and sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn’t the best either, sore throat and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night.
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Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.
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Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.
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My child was absent from school yesterday because he had a sore trout.
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Please excuse my son for being absent yesterday. “He has a cold and could not breed well”.
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Excuse my son. He’s been under the doctor.
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Please excuse my son from being absent yesterday. “He had diarrhea and his boots leak”.
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Please excuse my daughter for being absent yesterday. “She was in bed with very bad gramps”.
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Please excuse my child from school yesterday. “He had a bad stomach egg”.
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Please excuse my child from missing school yesterday. “I thought we had a 3 day weekend”.
I certainly hope that the children of these parents are smarter than the parents seem to be. Bad grammar, misspellings, and a general lack of concern with making the notes read like they came from a thinking adult. There are times when talking with youngsters is the most refreshing part of the day. At least they’re honest and anything humorous they come up with is based on a lack of experience and not a lack of intelligence.
As I sit here today watching the freaking snow come down I’m a little irked because I have a few people in my life who’ve labeled me a ‘neat freak’. I’ve never been too fond of that negative terminology or the term OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) but I suppose in the end it’s probably true to a degree. Looking through my family tree for any proof of a ‘neat’ gene was no help at all. Believe me there is no indication whatsoever that anyone in my family was ever ‘neat’ at the level I seem to be. I have to admit that my nephew in Texas shows some minor indicators but not near the level I’ve reached.
These days it seems this condition is all the rage but they (the experts) have come up with a number of new names for what they deem a terrible affliction, ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) immediately comes to mind, and OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder).
Just another excuse to bang the prescription drug drum. More drugs, take more drugs, buy more drugs, and everything will be just fine. Take the small children who may act up slightly in school, diagnose them with a myriad of alphabet diseases, and immediately put them onto some sort of drug regimen. The teachers apparently need their classes to be totally calm and controllable or they just can’t get the job done. Everyone knows its always much easier to control a room full of zombies than a bunch of excited children.
I agree there are some children and adults who are at the extreme end of hyperactivity and may need some sort of medication to calm them but not at the levels we’re currently seeing.
I feel for those people and can’t begin to imagine trying to live a normal life if my ‘neat freak’ affliction were twice as bad as it is. Unfortunately thousands of young children are automatically labeled with OCD, ADD, or ADHD which will then follow them for the rest of their lives. It not only colors how other people see them but how they see themselves. It actually in some cases can give them an excuse for continued bad behavior. "I’m OCD, it’s not my fault, my parents forgot to give me my pills this morning."
My sympathies go out to those people suffering with severe cases of this affliction. My sympathies also go out to the thousands of young children who are being medicated unnecessarily in order to maintain some sort of control in the schools. Being a smart ass with a wise mouth doesn’t make you ADD, ADHD, OCD, or anything else. It just makes you a smart ass with a big mouth who should not be considered a candidate for drugging.
I’m sure that some of you will be pissed off and disagree with me completely. That’s your prerogative but it won’t change in any way what I think or feel on the subject. For those of you who want to rant and rave at me, feel free.
I’ve never been accused of being overly sentimental but on a number of occasions I’ve been told by friends and family members that I was anti-Santa and had no Christmas spirit. I never took those kinds of criticisms to heart because I know they weren’t always factual. Unless you’ve been in an intimate relationship with someone you just can”t honestly make those kind of assumptions or so I thought.
Since it’s the Christmas season and everyone is alleged to be happy and jolly I thought I would pass some of my happy and jolly along to the rest of you to explain those terrible but true accusations.
I was accused many years ago of being a Bah Humbug and a holiday hater. Unfortunately at that time I was. I worked during at that time for a national toy company and Christmas was considered our life blood, it was a freaking nightmare. We began planning for Christmas in early June every year and it was the constant drumbeat every effing day until the following January. It lasted until January because that was when all of the phony people returned the so-so gifts they were given because they sucked and they just wanted cash. I worked there for thirteen long, long, long, Christmas seasons.
Normal people spend approximately one month a year with the holidays constantly on their minds and almost all of them are exhausted in January and glad to have them over with for another year. So in my thirteen years with the Child World\/Children’s Palace chain I was blessed with effing Christmas cheer for a total of 104 months. For you math majors in the audience that equates to over a century of Christmases that I’ve been blessed with. Red and green ribbons, gifts, toys, pissed off customers, bratty little shits, drunken Santa’s, and a long stream of six day work weeks. You bet your ass I hated Christmas. My skin would actually crawl when I heard Silent Night or Deck the Freaking Halls.
I don’t remember most Februaries during that time because I was asleep. It took me until April to get back to normal just in time to begin preparations for the next Christmas. It was a Holly Jolly hell and I felt I was being punished for something awful I did in another life. I’d been convinced by karma that I was at one time, some where, in another life, a no good bastard whose was still paying for all of his misdeeds.
Now to the present. I still suffer through Christmas but every once in a while I feel a stab of sentimentality. When my better-half runs crazily through the house wearing stupid reindeer antlers or when her kids show up unexpectedly to surprise her with a Christmas visit, I feel the love. This year will be extra special and I’m already feeling the tug on my heart strings for the new grand child. To me Christmas has always been for the young children. Having this new young family member will most certainly keep the true spirit of Christmas alive for us for many years to come.
So to you all, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and a great big BAH HUMBUG from me.
everyuselessthing.com 