Part I: Bitter

Yesterday I confessed to Navi was what troubling my part of the world, and she asked this question:

"Do you wish you could have done more?"

My immediate response was "Yes," --there is always more we wish we could do in any situation, make it better, improve, or even paradoxically, learn when to let something go faster, sooner, with more gentle indifference.

But sometimes life isn't about regret. Sometimes life just sucker-punches us. It breaks.

And all we can do is analyze the fragments and then add prevention.

So here is my voice of prevention:

I am seriously, deeply concerned about this generation from one aspect, and that is they have never not known a time when people, in real time, communicate on a computer. This to me, is both miraculous, and profoundly disturbing. The incessant trolling...the inability to be the machine, to be of the machine and not above it, is terrifying to me and rocks me to my inner core for our children. Even these words here, when I hit publish, are forever. They become digitally immortal, and unlike humans, cannot be silenced. Oh, what power---as a colleague of mine said yesterday, Facebook, etc. is like a loaded cannon in the hands of babies. If you think we're being hyperbolic, I will tell you to respectfully...reconsider.

Bear writes so lovingly of his cub. Bear - if you are half the father that comes across in your writing, you are a wonderful husband and father indeed. And being my nosey mother hen self, I would offer a some more advice for you:

• Wait on Holy Grail just a bit - like age eleven, and don't forget about the part in the castle, with the underwear, and you know...and this is not a censorship of the vestal virgins in the castle, but the appreciation and background knowledge of medieval England helps the humor. Or, you can just say "What the heck--"Fetchy La Vache" is funny at any age.
• You are doing a great job of teaching him the skills and social maneuvering of these virtual worlds. And I have no doubt you are also teaching him that these virtual worlds come with ignorant trolls, and what impact they may have on his view of himself and his friends. Mitagating this impact is of topmost concern for all parents in this Facebook-tentacle-and-claw world.

<hug>

Part II: Sweet