About Dogs and Cats and their Buddies. And some little jokes.

Previously posted on my Facebook Page.

WHY do cats knock down stuff. Experts (who are cats) say they simply want to play with the object. Cats are natural hunters who have a tendency to play with their prey. When they nudge a small object with their paw, they're performing the same behavior. As cruel as it may seem to us, they're not doing it for entertainment. Cats are weird, isn’t it? Okay, you may sweep the broken glass off the floor now. 🐈🫗🐈‍⬛

WHY do cats like to watch birds? It's all instinct. Whatever breed, temperament or age— all cats are born with strong hunting instincts. Cats naturally consider birds as prey, whether they want to play or are seeing the feathery friend as potential food, and their natural instincts kick in. Or maybe cats simply want to befriend birds and teach them to facebook (verb) aside from tweeting. “Less noisy,” says Fizz. 🐱🐦🐱

BEFORE a police officer can legally pull over a driver, he or she must have probable cause to do so. Maybe the vehicle has a broken taillight or the officer witnessed the driver run a red light. It could be the driver was speeding or swerving in and out of a lane. But then, if a cop recognizes you as his/her Facebook friend and just wants to say “Hi!” that’d be okay. Probably. 👮‍♀️🚖👮

EVEN dogs that have had hearty appetites can become picky eaters, sometimes overnight. Changes in eating habits can be temporary or permanent, caused by illness, injury, aging, or other factors. Or don’t worry too much. Maybe the cat has influenced the dog about wellness eating, and all that. 🐕🥘🐕

WHY do cats knock down stuff. Experts (who are cats) say they simply want to play with the object. Cats are natural hunters who have a tendency to play with their prey. When they nudge a small object with their paw, they're performing the same behavior. As cruel as it may seem to us, they're not doing it for entertainment. Cats are weird, isn’t it? Okay, you may sweep the broken glass off the floor now. 🐈🫗🐈‍⬛

CATS react to the emotion, not desire. That's why a cat comes back to continue doing the things you told them not to do. Like sew a nice winter sweater while you sleep, reconfigure the house wifi, or cook paella when you are out of the house, leaving the kitchen in a mess. 🙀😽😾

WHY are people rude these days? There can be many root causes for rudeness, such as insecurity or fear. People are often rude after being on the receiving end of rudeness. Researchers have found that “just like the common cold, common negative behaviors can spread easily and have significant consequences.” Or maybe some people are rude because they don’t have a cat or dog. Especially cat. Must be. 😤😠😓

WHY do cats disobey a lot? Cats don't have a pack mentality. In the wild, they tend to be solitary, so they're not hard-wired to obey. But domestic cats have been somewhat infantilized. Our cats remain kittens in certain respects, able to identify their humans as “mom” and “dad.” But mostly cats disobey because they can. That’s what Fizz explains to me though she’s a good girl. 😼😾😸

THE dog equivalent of singing is the howl. Dogs are so talented at joining into the sounds of song that they will raise their voices in howls. There are lots of funny videos on the internet of dogs howling along to the singing of their owners. There have even been Broadway performances based on the howling of dogs. Arrow howls, too, but she also does hiphop and rap. 🐕🧑‍🎤🐕

DOGS can be trained to recognize and respond to shapes and to words. It takes repetition, reinforcement, and patience. Some dogs go to school, literally, to learn to read. Arrow went to Harvard Law School for Dogs but she dropped out. She preferred to learn at home, with the help of Cyd then, and now Fizz and Ching. Cats are smart teachers. 🐕📜🐕

Love. Promises. Negotiations.

Previously posted on my Facebook page. Or written many years ago.

LOVE. How seductive and alluring and mystifying love is. Love is beautiful, it is so glorious that when it gains entry into a heart—all that is felt is pleasure, all that is seen is beauty, all that is heard is a sweet song of wisdom. And so we gravitate to love—we slip and slide on a sweet sweep to love like an ocean's tempest that crawls back to the shore on a calm approach. 

       Love heals, love is positively pro-active, love isn't immobile or inactive—it is constantly moving, finding ways and means to change for the better. Hence, we should evolve into better human beings when love starts finding room in the deepest confines of our being. Love motivates and inspires, but it should motivate us more to realize brilliant potentials instead of coddling us to daydream under a moonlight's glare. For love is real, it is not imagined... I learned a lot from life, from falling in love then falling mightily hard. In each misstep or mishap, I excise sublime lessons despite the bleeding wounds within. I grow, I find a spiritual maturation that only strenthens me than weakens me more. 

       Love is all about presence—being there, being around, being beside her. Beside her, that no matter how harsh and uncomfortable circumstances and situations that love randomly chooses to blossom, nurture, and nourish itself—we choose to stay. It's because many times we believe love will find a way. Because since love is positive and optimistic, the co-dependency only points at the good things that both can do together—from little shared activities like pulling grasses off a winter's brush on spring or folding clothes together off the dryer or choosing fresh ingredients in an open market for a paella and red wine for dinner to bigger synergistic projects like a children's book written together or a family community event organized together or simply an entire Thanksgiving or Christmas Day hangin' out with either or both families. 💖👫💖

PRESENCE, being there. That is love. Love is not just a five-figured proposal flashed on Jumbotron on a baseball game, adorned by a four-figured ring. Love is not blind subservience or allegiance based on un-reason either. Love is not dancing with her in the dark, it is walking with her in the dark—onto the light. Love is not defending her no matter what, whether she is right or wrong—because love sees not the person you had the hottest sex with or gifted you the most awesome car ever. 

       Love sees the goodness of a shared energy, not the badness of a shared coolness. So when we find ourselves sliding back to the darkness that we thought would be swept away, or we feel we are leading her to darkness—we must pull out, quit and leave. For love is not Sid and Nancy, or Bonnie and Clyde, not even Romeo and Juliet—because love offers more life than dooms life. It is not dying together, it is living together. Love must calm anger down than trigger it, love must create than destroy, love must bloom nonstop than waste away. 💖👫💖

MEANTIME, when you are in love today, savor it—continue watering it, continue feeding it. Like The Little Prince who tamed The Fox—we are all The One Special Rose that we cared for, protected in a glass globe from pummeling rain, piercing sun, and cold snow. We need that warmth as we need to be needed to give warmth. 

       So write her a poem each morning, cook her the best dinner, walk with her hand in hand in the street, massage her feet later as she rests in bed, tell her funny stories than sad tales, touch her face and look into her eyes when you kiss her, hold and explore her nakedness when you make love to her... And do these over and over and over again—until all these beautiful blessings become a part of yourselves that no matter how the unpredictable seasons of life attempt to shake love, you two are still rockin' and rollin'. 

       So love the one you're with. And be there, always be there. 💖👫💖

Compilation of short MORNING THOUGHTS on Facebook.

Sublimities evolve in us. We just have to “listen” to the insistent voice inside. As a boy, I formulated many questions that didn’t get response/s from adults around me. So I hushed, and sought answers myself. I wrote, I created art, I explored my surroundings. Next, I had to share what I “discovered.” Words on paper weren’t enough. So I made art. Music, as well. Those were better, more peaceful, and certainly a lot more effective—than talking. Or screaming. ✍️🎼✍️

Longest Christmas in the world? In the Philippines. Four months, at least, starts on September—and ends on the first week of January. Not just religious or cultural. It is also primal response after months of typhoon misery. Employees are given a 13th-month pay or extra 1-month pay in November per labor law, excluding bonus. Most workers rest from work, paid, from Dec 15 to Jan 3. No excuse not to party or eat a feast of food! 🏵🎪🏵

I was a media liaison staff for Presidential Commission on Good Government, directly under then President Corazon Aquino. PCGG was tasked to recover ill-gotten wealth by the Marcos family. I also sat with political think-tanks that ran the campaign of presidential candidates. I started my journalism career with Ang Pahayagang Malaya (The Free Newspaper), which battled the dictatorship. Looking back, I realize how different it was then. 1980s and 2000 onwards. So different.☎️📸📰

Winter isn’t here yet but I am already thinking of springtime planting. Flowers and vegetables. Hoping to do “earth romancin’” better in 2022. I guess, gardening comes with old(er) age? My most colorful memory of sweetly tilling the good land is my grandpa Severino diligently tending to his veggie patch in the city and his garlic farm in the province, and grandma Luz and her orchids, roses, bougainvillea etcetera. Nurturing seeds, nourishing life. 🌴🌱🌿

The Lost Art of Chillen. Dogs and cats remind us. No fail, right after the obligatories of morning food and bathroom moment, Arrow and Cyd go chill on the sun room. Chillen. That’s what we humans were before computer technology defocused, distracted, diverted—and divided us. Wake up on rooster’s crow, feed the animals, sweep the yard, cook/eat breakfast, read the morning paper just once, and the day happens sweatin’. We pursued the light irrelevant we waded in the dark. 

       It’s not like we don’t pursue change or “the light” these days. We do. But we seek change as a massively divided front and broken peripheries. So call for "change" takes the form of a reactive/reactionary yell. 🌼🍂🍀

We don’t observe Thanksgiving back home in the Philippines. And many other “holidays” that we do here in America. It’s fun! All I see and experience are people gathered, cool vibes converged for dinner. Although I am alone today, I am not lonely. I am with the dogs and cat. Enjoying the blessing of sweet warm light in the sun room, old rhythm & blues on the turntable. Later, I’ll share dinner with Arrow The Brat Doog, Rockin’ Riley, and Cyd The Koolcat! ☮️❤️☮️

Day before Thanksgiving. Travel time. Also, the day for many to spew grade school level mischief—insults, shaming, putdowns. `Though I don’t believe kids hurl inane asides in general compared with adults these days who throw all kinds of dirt just to be noticed or “liked.” But I get it. I get the historical backstory, Covid-19 caution, turkey drama. Politics. Yet Thanksgiving is family and collective dinner to thank the God/dess that we are still alive.

       I am spending my Thanksgiving alone with the dogs and cat but if it’d be easy to just hop in Elon Musk’s spaceship, I’d be where my family is so far away. ❤️☮️❤️

Remember the days when we had to conserve (camera) films, careful with each shot, not to waste them? We develop negatives in a dark room or wait for a week for a photoshop to process them? We neatly arrange those photographs in an album and show them to visiting friends and kin. These days, easy! Click, presto! Then we post them for the universe to ogle at, anytime of the day! So why would I be concerned if Facebook “steals” them? LOL! I still got a lot and more coming. 📷🤪📸

When holidays approach, especially if it is Christian, expect a lot of dissing, shaming, insults. I don’t get the sense of these at all. We are never contented with spewing fire over political diversity and stuff. There’s just got to be a daily dose of reasons to toss a darkness trash at each other. All I see in holidays are break from work or routinary grind of life and family/friendship gathering. Yet we don’t see those. We see more reasons to thumbs-down. Ah. 🏵🎪🏵

Reading old work and reading new work are worlds apart. It isn’t about 1912 compared with 1985. Not that I am saying writers these days, mostly 21st century authors, are less smart. They could be. The problem is "writers" proliferate these days and we are not even half-certain if they are legit or whatever they wrote, which end up in heavily trafficked memes and links, got credibility. As long as words capture the political bias or cultural prejudice, people click and share. 

       Exactly what Alvin Toffler wrote in 1970: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” 📚🖊📚

HOW IT WAS. Compiled from my previous Facebook posts.

Fiesta. Rooted in Christianity, dating back to the Spanish colonial period. Communities of the predominantly Catholic Philippines have a patron saint assigned to each of them. Filipinos treat these days as a communal party. Rain or shine, good times or bad. Fiesta must go on! Friends and families and strangers exchange fun banters: Basketball, boxing, beauty pageants, adobo recipes, and stuff. No Trump, Biden or Imelda drama, please! Thanksgiving is Fiesta Day. 🎪🇵🇭🎪

My childhood snacks. Merienda: 10 AM and 4 PM on no-school days. On school days, “recess” snacks were eaten in those time/s as well. Then, there were no McDonald’s or Jollibee, the Filipino version. So no burgers, fries, pizza, Coke in cups and the likes. There was ice cream but the “dirty ice cream” that is peddled via a homemade cart in the streets. Usual snacks were “turon” or fried plantains, “halo-halo,” fresh fruits, “puto” or rice cake, and coconut juice. 🍎🥯🥥

Canning and/or pickling are methods of food preservation in which food is processed and sealed in an airtight container like Mason jars, and steel and tin cans. I am sure, canning is still a huge home-based activity these days but not how it was then. I used to watch my grandmother “canned” or pickled cucumbers, onions, peppers, and other vegetables. A favorite was “burong talangka” or fermented crab roe. Basically fresh river crabs stored and covered in salt. 🫙🦀🫙

The Soap Box Derby is a youth-oriented (7 to 20 years old) soap box car racing program held in Akron, Ohio each year. “Cars” race downhill, propelled by gravity alone. The race has been running in the United States since 1934. But are your kids aware of this popular family-oriented activity? Community winners travel from across the U.S., Canada, Germany and Japan to compete. This year’s event was held in July at Derby Downs Drive in Akron. (Photo: The Detroit News.) 🚘👦🚘

Jukebox, a machine that automatically plays a selected musical recording when a coin is inserted. Many are still around, especially in small town bars, pool halls, and diners. But the young may seem unacquainted with these “strange” thingies. But, oh my, I remember those high school days. I’d take my date to a restaurant and would insert 10 centavos to play Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love” for her. These days, a jukebox would cost from $800 to $12,000! 🎼🎧🎼

Kitchens such as this in Asia, photo credit to Marcus Lacey (grabbed via Google). Wood, charcoal smear, smell of smoke. Basically, outdoors or doors and windows are kept wide open. Scent of food wafted through the next few neighbors’ houses. No prob. Summer rain would fall nonstop and the earth floor sometimes got flooded. The “inconvenience” was primal existence or day-to-day life so we were used to it. Somehow, I miss those “natural” kitchens, no e-gadgets. 🥥🔥🥣

I was born into and grew old(er) in a culture where laughter is life’s staple. Laughing is breathing. Each time people gather or hang out, jokes are tossed. In between workplace meetings or editorial deliberations, jokes are shared. These days, a joke doesn’t seem funny if it’s not “political humor,” which of course ridicules the other side of the spectrum. Or you gotta be careful with that joke. You might lose your job. Or massively insulted (shamed) online. A joke must be correct? 😁😅🤣

Chess in the “sari-sari” store front. In between moves, people would banter about stuff. Neighborhood gossip, last night’s basketball game on TV, coming elections, Tour of Luzon bicycle race, new popular movie, stuff. Fun. Sublime staple of community. The convenience store was “convenient” in the real sense of the word. Village folk could take out loans in goodies, payable on payday. People were talkin’. Humans, not AI. 📺☎️📸

Backyard vegetables. Apart from the ordinary “ampalaya” (bitter gourd) and “talong” (eggplant) that we usually planted at the backyard or “bakuran,” other leafy vegetables simply grew. Examples are “kangkong” or water spinach, “saluyot” or jute leaves, “alugbati” or malabar spinach, sayote, and “talbos ng kamote” or leaves of sweet potato, which are very nutritious and medicinal. Meat (pork, chicken, beef) and fish/seashells are mixed with these veggies. Swarap! 😋🍽😋

Leftover food. My mom used to call leftover rice, “kilabban,” and insisted that those were healthier than freshly-cooked rice. Leftover foods were dinner staples of my childhood years. These days, I notice that few younger people eat food that is a day old. They prefer “new” chows or “fastfood” offerings. When I was a boy, I didn’t trust food eaten beyond the house or those in restaurants, especially meat or fish. For me, it was all about food cooked by mom and dad or grandma. 🍲🍜🍛

HOW IT WAS. Compiled from my previous Facebook posts.

Scrabble days, family days, friendship days. Those days when home games were about people, collectives, gatherings. Before video games, internet games, and computer stuff took over our home existence. Scrabble was a favorite childhood leisure in my family. Parents and children were into it. Scrabble tournaments were held in school. Scrabble brought friends together. These days, humanity is mostly alone. Hence, funky inertia takes over. What’d life be when AI takes over? 🧮📝🗂

House chore implements. <>“Walis tingting” is an outdoor hard-broom made from the hard primary veins of the leaves of the coconut palm. Houses back home in the Philippines are usually gated. Cleaning the yard with “walis tingting” is an ordinary task. “Bunot” is "coconut brush" used in polishing/brushing the floor, usually wood house flooring. Good exercise as well to use “bunot” over floor polishers, which are used only in work offices. These house tools save electric power as well. 🧹🧺🧹

Vinyl library. I still keep vinyls and play them, once in a while. In fact, I prefer vinyl records spinning on a turntable over other ways to listen and enjoy music. I don’t like 1,001 songs in downloads or stocked up in a computer file. Those years, as a boy, when I spent hours and hours reading what was written on LP sleeves, listening to all kinds of music. The vinyl was invented by Emile Berliner in 1887, a lateral-cut flat disc to be played on the gramophone. Cool! 🎼🎧🎼

When I was in high school, me and some choice classmates would organize “disco-dancing” at a friend’s house. We’d pool resources or money for food and stuff but no alcoholic beverages because parents are at home. Even when mom and dad were out somewhere for the weekend, neighbors will know. Although they will not call the police, they will surely report to parents what’s going on. Those Friday or Saturday night dance frolic were fun. Of course, it was “Saturday Night Fever” and salsa days. 💃👯‍♀️🕺

When I was in middle high school, I co-founded a “little secret club” called Bredspays. That was after I saw the movie “Bless the Beasts and Children.” The 1971 film follows six teenaged “misfit” boys who are ostracized by other boys but form a bond among themselves. After seeing a herd of bison selected for culling by local hunters, they resolve to set the penned bison free. The Bredspays did similar stuff as well. Just remembering youth when we actually gathered as a cohesive unit and had fun doing good deeds. ☮️🦬☮️

Partially inspired by American mainstream comic strips and comic books, “komiks” has been widespread and popular throughout the Philippines from the 1920s to the present. I grew up with them; whenever my dad got home from work, he’d bring home a Liwayway “komiks-magasin” for mom and two boxes of Max’s fried chicken for the family. I will go for Liwayway, instead. My most favorite “komiks” author was Jim Fernandez, who crafted the wildly popular “Zuma” series. 📰🗞📰

How did you record rock concerts then? This dude (photo credit, CTTO) is quite inventive, isn’t it? Music festivals were fun! Remember Woodstock? Sure, there were fights or disturbances then. For example, the Altamont rock concert in California in 1969 where the Hells Angels were involved. But I didn’t shun concerts then, 1980s to early 2000s. It was still relatively peaceful. Unlike these days. Mass shootings and insane theatrics of hate mar concerts or public gatherings. 🎸☮️🪘

As a little boy, I was a huge fan of war/soldier TV shows: Combat! Rat Patrol. Garrison’s Gorillas. And cowboy movies. I still watch war movies, Westerns, and police procedurals, of course. Guns and bombs and crime or human annihilation are staples of these shows. Yet I evolved as a virulent anti-war activist and advocate of gun regulation. I am anti-war but I am not anti-military, I must repeat. And I hope discussion of this subject is as civil and grown-up as in the past. ☮️☮️☮️

Building or crafting a diorama from old luggages (“maleta”) was a childhood obsession. I would gather my toy soldiers and animals and superheroes and other tiny implements and construct a village, war zone, school ground, zoo, jungle, or sports plaza etcetera. That way, I could “create” a physical manifestation of the fictions in my head as a kid. I would spend hours and hours in a room while other children played outside. Busy, busy brain cells of mine. (Photo: Freepik.) 👦🧸👦

Flying kites in the meadow. That was my childhood. Summertime fun! Most kites were devised from old newspapers, crafted on bamboo stick frames. Strings were just about anything that we could find or improvise. There were afternoons when dozens of kites flew and soared in the air. There were even “dogfights” or kite battles up there! Some kids would save money, from school allowance, to buy colorful crepe papers for their kite body and tails. Cool! (Photo: CTTO.) 🌬🌤🎉

HOW IT WAS.

Compiled from my previous Facebook posts. 

“Sailing” toy boats, mostly made of paper or cardboard, by the ditch was a favorite child’s play in my time. Since rains are a perennial nature’s way back home, there’s always a steady stream of mild water on the ditch by the street after a downpour. So while waiting for rain to subside or stop, I’d craft my little “boats” and then hollered at playmate friends for a boat race. We usually wagered toy comic cards or “teks” or rare soda lids. Fun! ⛵️🛶⛵️

Traditional irrigation. Basin, check basin, furrow and strip irrigation. Each of these methods is suited for particular crops and land-types. The Qanats, developed in ancient Persia about 800 BCE, are among the oldest known irrigation methods still in use today. They are now found in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. When I was a boy, rice fields in the mountain terraces were irrigated via natural waters from the land. I was endlessly perplexed. 🌬💨💦

Long time ago, calculators were banned in school. We were even taught how to use the abacus. Fractions, decimal points, geometric configurations. We had to figure these all out via our innate thinking ability. Poetry, creative writing, journalism. Handwritten words. Fast forward to 21st century as computer technology subverts life. Mathematics, music, literature etc are now handed to AI or aided by “artificial intelligence.” All I see is Matrix-like doom. 🤖🧮🤖

Summer fiestas in the Philippines. “Endless” community parties where everyone is invited to join. Every barrio, town, province, and city have their own fiesta to celebrate. Good times or bad, it's unstoppable. Free foods! Shows, carnivals, sports, games. Fiestas or “pyesta” start right after Lent and end by July or start of rain. Fiestas also strengthen bonds between people and villages, which are tested during natural calamity seasons when rains evolve into typhoons. 🎪🇵🇭🎪

On election season in the Philippines when I was child, it was all fiesta-fun for me. Of course, I was oblivious or unknowing of the “bad stuff” in politics then (I was a child!) I’d collect colorful election paraphernalia: Pamphlets, posters, handbills, buttons, hats, flaglets, shirts etc etcetera. In fact, I read all those campaign literature without really “understanding” what was going on. But then what I read or evolved in time, primed me to pursue journalism. 🧒🇵🇭👧

Street games. Patintero. Luksong tinik. Taguan. Step no. Holen. Teks. Etcetera. Fun! Playtime was after school at 4 to a few minutes before Angelus at 6, when dusk began to fall. On weekends, we had longer play time, after we accomplished our house chores. During summer, in a mining town where we lived, we’d trekked up the hills and gathered guavas. Imagine how we climbed up trees, walked by monkey bridges, and hunted wild spiders! 🧒🇵🇭👧

The Carabao. Water buffalo in English. Called “kalabaw” in the Philippines, the super strong animal represents hard work. Before machines took over ricefield toil or agricultural labor, the carabao plowed the land. Watching them work with human hands was main reason why I spent summers in the barrio when I was young. Human/animal synergy was alive. On rest time, the carabao would take a nap on a puddle and I would sleep on top of him/her. 🐃🇵🇭🐃

Asheville’s Friday drum circle in downtown’s Pritchard Park is a leading community attraction in my home city. For many years, at least since I got here. I haven’t been much in downtown for years now though, apart from passing by it when we do quarterly errands. Not sure if the circle is still active as it was. In fact, the drum circle was a major motivation for our “Bonfires for Peace” concert events that we also held in the same park for years. Till hate took over. 🪘🎼🪘

In those days we (mostly) only called people on the telephone when it was necessary. Not all houses had telephones. In the Philippines, payphones were in stores for 1 peso for 3 minutes use. Or in booths for a quarter or two. These days cellphones are used not simply for communication. Which is a cool improvement. Until we placed “all our life” in this tiny gadget. How am I supposed to take photos of Arrow, Ching and Fizz without my cellphone? ☎️📞☎️

Public transport. Bus, trains, jeepneys etcetera. There are about 1.474 billion vehicles worldwide per 2023 count. In 2015, around 947 million. About 19 percent of those vehicles are in the United States. While we mouth advocacy of “climate change,” transportation continues to contribute to global pollution. Electric vehicles help but what’d help the most is lesser dependence on private vehicles to instead focus on public transport, the way it was. The way I grew up. 🚌🚐🚌

Children and Internet. And Stuff.

Previously posted on my Facebook page. Or written years ago.

HOW do we teach kids and students about internet safety? Can we, really? It was an intense subject of PTA discussion in a Lakewood CA middle school (that I covered years ago). Should parents impose more restrictions, should the school system modify curriculum and introduce a new program to serve the purpose? 

       Meantime, when a child's curiosity gets a bit too zealous, how do we block him/her from the alleged sexual predator, and other kinds of ogres lurking on the e-wall shadow? Put a password barrier, stabilize firewalls, buy some more anti-this/that apps and software? Remember the first time a child learns how to click the TV remote, or when a teenager first ferrets a Budweiser onto the crib, or a youth excitedly maneuvers his first sedan on a city back alley? 

       Should we heighten the Restricted signs or PG advisories, or post more cops on the road, or should parents start checking every little post, selfie, shared video, Instagram, email etc that their kids send and receive 1001 times a day? Crazy, right? 👶📲💻

I HAVE a very old-school, maybe primitive remedy—or inroads to remedies, should I say. Truth of the time is—that  iPad or laptop or iPhone will always be there. There will be a time when all human beings got a Smartphone, plugged in 24/7. Even an infant will be signed into a 5-in-1 Verizon plan, you reckon? So what do we do? 

       I guess, we just have to not get tired of reminding our kids that people are not emoticons or avatars or emojis that they can control, one-click. People can be nice or rude in a playground, flea market, campus grounds, or dog park. That's real, breathing life—learn how to deal with truths afront. Games are not always Super Smash Bros or PvZ Garden Warfare. There are real games like little league baseball, soapbox derby and table tennis—or what about a real acoustic guitar and piccolo in favor of downloaded dubstep? 

       With these, they can sweat funk out, and laugh aloud, and high-five friends, as well. “Surfing” could be something like paddling a boat in a recreational lake, and “texting” could rest on the dinner table and living room in favor of simply savoring the food blessing or speaking and talking with mouths open not heads bowed. Share some future dreams, travel wishes, and what happened in school today? 

       Books were leafed pages, not electronic flashes on a tiny gadget that got lost in an ocean of legos and puzzle pieces in the den. Teach kids to wash dishes with hands, pick up stuff and things on the floor, fold laundried clothes, vacuum the floor on a weekend at least, build a backyard garden and care for it, walk the dog and have the duty to feed them whenever. 👶📲💻

GOOD ole children's chores when oldies like me were kids. Or in case you have extra dough, travel beyond the US—go to cultures where the internet is simply complementary to “offline” life. Or instead of purchasing more online games and Blu-Rays, why not extra money for saxophone tutorials or ballet classes? In this way, we don't have to get neurotic and paranoid that maybe our 12 or 13 year old boy maybe stealing glances at a Pornhub page or our little girl is chatting to a pedophile in the guise of a cool and awesome 12-year old. 

       Children need to learn “internet safety” as they learn life and living taught by parents who are more concerned with the total well-being of a child, or future adult—not just how to wade around the internet. Computer technology could be as important as automobiles and microwaves—but humanity survive life and salvage wisdom without these. There are other aspects and concerns of life, apparently. 

       We need to mold a child's mind, instead of conditioning their brain; we are raising kids who feel with their hearts because they hear, see, feel, and taste life—and not because all these are programmed, ready for the taking (or tapping, clicking). 👶📲💻