week of change

The family metamorphosis has begun...

We heard that our oldest son has been accepted into the Army, after the Navy and Air Force rejected him. His recruiter told him that the Army is no longer taking new recruits for the infantry, so that is good news. That means going to Iraq and Afghanistan may not be in his future, which is a very good thing. I think he feels relieved to know his future is set for the next couple of years.

We also found out that our next to oldest is accepted in the school he wanted to attend and that my mother has graceously offered to pay for his tuition. He may be her only grandchild to attend college full time! Since the school has monthly start dates, he moved his to September so he has time to work out the financing for his housing. Just the fact that he is going has him excited. He has been playing with a band at local places and last night played somewhere in north Raleigh. He plays base guitar even though he started playing drums, then switched to guitar and now plays bass. He thinks these skills will help set him apart for the others at his school as he knows how to play music instead of just wanting to learn the skill of sound production, he knows what it means.

Our youngest son turned 16 this week, so we took the annual pilgrimage to Wet'n Wild Emerald Point water park. I remember many years going for our first time and he was around 7 years old. He was fearless going down the 76 foot high nearly vertical slide. It was all I could do to look over the edge and go down as I am fearful of heights. This year my daughter went along, so she was my excuse to NOT go down it as she wanted me to help keep her brothers from forcing her to go down it. I willingly obliged.

After spending most of the day at the water park, the only bad thing was I got lost trying to find it, again. I actually turned around in the very same exit ramp where I got lost last year. I hate repeating mistakes a second time, so this really irritated me. What makes matters worse is that I almost hit a car on that ramp. For some odd reason a car just popped out of the other lane and I came within millimeters of hitting that car, just after the car behind me honked at me. I had to thank GOD for protecting me as that reminded me of a childhood disaster... As a family of four, we drove by car to Walt Disney World in Florida the year it first opened. As we were getting off on the ramp to the theme park, a car hit us from behind. It jolted us pretty good as I can still remember it. What was even more disappointing was that we had to use of vacation money to fix the car and we never made it to Disney World. I have actually never been to this day. We have been to Disneyland in Los Angeles twice, but never the one in Florida. So you can see why I was so thankful that I did not repeat history and ruin our son's birthday bash in the sun and water.

Speaking of Los Angeles, last weekend my wife and I went to Lake Junaluska in order to see a couple who are really good friends of my wife's parents, who live in Anaheim Hills, California. That is a wonderful place right in the mountains, just 30 miles from the Tennessee border. It is one of our favorite places in North Carolina. We first went there over 10 years ago for a South Korean missionaries reunion, for those who had lived and worked in that country. My wife's parents live in South Korea for 25 years and my wife was born there and lived her whole life there. Around the lake next to the hotel is hundreds of rose bushes lining the lake. Every different color and fragrance you can imagine. Sunday morning I woke up at my usual very early time and went for a run around the lake. I felt like I ran twice as fast as I do in the humid part of the state where we live. Maybe one day we will be able to live in the mountains. I am a mountain man and cannot understand how people want to live at the beach! That kind of change for us is quite a ways down the road.

change

I see the world changing before my very eyes. I am sure in the past 100 years other dramatic changes were more obvious, like moving from a local agrarian society to the country wide industrial age or from traveling by horse to bouncing along in a car. My wife's parents tell stories of going to South Korea by boat, which normally took a month and then flying for the first time by plane. In order to cover the cost, they chauffeured Korean orphans to the USA for an agency that matched them to their adopting parents. That is a pretty dramatic change, going from a month long voyage to 24 hour. Maybe it is the communication age we have entered in my lifetime. This week the whole world knew about the flooding in Myanmar and the earthquake in China within hours. When a new Indian movie comes out half way around the world, I don't have to wait three months for the release date, I just drive to the local Indian shop and rent it for $2. When I want to listen to just released music, I just go to iTunes and I can listen or buy it today. It seems like the whole world has gone from patiently waiting to expecting immediate results within my lifetime. I did not even mention computers either. Another example from my wife's parents illustrates this perfectly. When my wife and I first got married, I saw her write a hand written postal gram letter every week to her parents. We would receive the same from them. It took two weeks to receive the latest news each way. On a really fast arrival we would get it in ten days. Then came email in the past twenty years only. Now that takes too long so we have instant messaging. Last but not least we have games. I remember when my best friend's father worked on computers when I was a kid. We were all amazed at his secret lifestyle. I also recall living in Saudi Arabia and hearing of the wives of the employees playing computer games to pass the time - which always amazed me still to this day. I remember our kids going from Super-Nintendo, to Playstation, to N64, to XBox, to XBox 360. We first started out huddling around a desk playing Mortal Kombat. Now my youngest son plays with people all over the world from his room on his XBox 360. Some of them are his friends, but most of them he has never met nor can they even speak English. Simply amazing.

The most dramatic change I am thinking about today is in attitudes of young people. My oldest son was given an option in court yesterday. Pay $200 and do 24 hours of community service OR spend 24 hours in jail. He did not even think twice. He wanted to spend time in jail. One of his friends, who he has known since elementary, is in jail for 60 days for possession of drugs. I guess he will join him.