Monday, June 14, 2004
Some random thoughts on twins and lemonade.
Hello everyone! What is going on? Many of you live in areas that experience bad weather this time of year. Here in Iowa we have had intermittent heavy rains and tornado warnings. The sun is up as I type this, so I feel as if I should be enjoying the day before the weather turns. So this blog may be short! Well, short for me...
Does anyone else think that it seems as if multiple births are more common than in the past? As a kid, I hardly remember twins at all. Now there are many people in my own church who are having twins. I see many ladies at the shopping mall that have two or three kids in a stroller, all appearing to be the same age.
I wonder why this is? I have two theories; one is that more people are using fertility drugs/therapies. I am not sure how being more fertile would result in multiple births, but as I understand it, such drugs can increase likelihood for multiples. This is interesting to me because the world is avery crowded place, and America in general has become a very "busy" and non-family oriented society. Drop off day cares and divorces are pretty common in the average adult's life. Yet people still feel the need to procreate, even to the extent of getting chemical help to do so. Just a curiosity of mine.
My second theory is that our old friend evolution is involved. If your family genetically predisposed for multiple births, your DNA is multiplied even more so than an average family. Whatever genes control this sort of event are now prevalent in two or three virile offspring, rather than one. If this gene is dominant in any manner, you could only expect for multiple births to become common, as they go out and mate with us single-birth folks. It's a simple matter of probability. If my assumptions on dominancy are true, in the near future we can expect a large portion of America to be made up of multiple birth offspring.
Anyway, its something that I am curious about.
Now about lemonade... here in the United States, there is an old tradition called the lemonade stand. Small children make pitchers of lemonade (or Kool Aid), and set up a small stand on the edge of the street. They sell cups of the drink to people for small amounts of change. It is a fun game for the children to play, as they get to make the drink themselves, and pretend they are running a store. They also learn about advertising, salemanship, the value of earning money, and things like operating costs and profits.
You don't see many lemonade stands around any more, but I almost always stop if I see one. It is fun to buy the drink from the kids, and to see their eyes light up when you hand them a few quarters. The drink is almost always warm, and usually is bitter (as they prepared it wrong). But it is fun to be a part of it all.
However, when I see a lemonade stand these days, my first instinct is one of danger. There are so many disturbed people in the world, and the incidence of childhood abuse is very high. On the news the other night, they reported on the immense number of people guilty of sexual abuse of children in the Omaha area. It is very sad, and scary.
The lemonade stand is something that my own children (if I ever have any) will not be able to partake in. As a parent, I would be worried that someone would drive by and grab one of my children as they stood there unaware. My sense of danger for these children is so strong that I actually find myself feeling guilty for approaching a lemonade stand. Just last Thursday I drove past one because I did not see any adults around, and it just felt uncomfortable.
I hate that the world has lost so much innocence. I would have liked to took a picture of the stand, to show my friends from Japan and Singapore, but photographing a strager's child is almost a crime these days, and it feels more uncomfortable than approaching the stand to begin with. Even when I take my niece or nephew to the park to play, I often have children ask me to lift them up or help them get into the swings. I feel so weird, because I know that the minute I grab the child to lift them onto the equipment, that their parent's heart is momentarily sinking in fear. It is a bad climate we have adopted here in America, but a necessary one. You just can't trust strangers any more.
Well, I'm off to find a sunny piece of Iowa to play on for a couple hours. Either that, or I am going to the book store to have tea and study Japanese. Either way, it's going to be a beautiful morning.
See ya!
Does anyone else think that it seems as if multiple births are more common than in the past? As a kid, I hardly remember twins at all. Now there are many people in my own church who are having twins. I see many ladies at the shopping mall that have two or three kids in a stroller, all appearing to be the same age.
I wonder why this is? I have two theories; one is that more people are using fertility drugs/therapies. I am not sure how being more fertile would result in multiple births, but as I understand it, such drugs can increase likelihood for multiples. This is interesting to me because the world is avery crowded place, and America in general has become a very "busy" and non-family oriented society. Drop off day cares and divorces are pretty common in the average adult's life. Yet people still feel the need to procreate, even to the extent of getting chemical help to do so. Just a curiosity of mine.
My second theory is that our old friend evolution is involved. If your family genetically predisposed for multiple births, your DNA is multiplied even more so than an average family. Whatever genes control this sort of event are now prevalent in two or three virile offspring, rather than one. If this gene is dominant in any manner, you could only expect for multiple births to become common, as they go out and mate with us single-birth folks. It's a simple matter of probability. If my assumptions on dominancy are true, in the near future we can expect a large portion of America to be made up of multiple birth offspring.
Anyway, its something that I am curious about.
Now about lemonade... here in the United States, there is an old tradition called the lemonade stand. Small children make pitchers of lemonade (or Kool Aid), and set up a small stand on the edge of the street. They sell cups of the drink to people for small amounts of change. It is a fun game for the children to play, as they get to make the drink themselves, and pretend they are running a store. They also learn about advertising, salemanship, the value of earning money, and things like operating costs and profits.
You don't see many lemonade stands around any more, but I almost always stop if I see one. It is fun to buy the drink from the kids, and to see their eyes light up when you hand them a few quarters. The drink is almost always warm, and usually is bitter (as they prepared it wrong). But it is fun to be a part of it all.
However, when I see a lemonade stand these days, my first instinct is one of danger. There are so many disturbed people in the world, and the incidence of childhood abuse is very high. On the news the other night, they reported on the immense number of people guilty of sexual abuse of children in the Omaha area. It is very sad, and scary.
The lemonade stand is something that my own children (if I ever have any) will not be able to partake in. As a parent, I would be worried that someone would drive by and grab one of my children as they stood there unaware. My sense of danger for these children is so strong that I actually find myself feeling guilty for approaching a lemonade stand. Just last Thursday I drove past one because I did not see any adults around, and it just felt uncomfortable.
I hate that the world has lost so much innocence. I would have liked to took a picture of the stand, to show my friends from Japan and Singapore, but photographing a strager's child is almost a crime these days, and it feels more uncomfortable than approaching the stand to begin with. Even when I take my niece or nephew to the park to play, I often have children ask me to lift them up or help them get into the swings. I feel so weird, because I know that the minute I grab the child to lift them onto the equipment, that their parent's heart is momentarily sinking in fear. It is a bad climate we have adopted here in America, but a necessary one. You just can't trust strangers any more.
Well, I'm off to find a sunny piece of Iowa to play on for a couple hours. Either that, or I am going to the book store to have tea and study Japanese. Either way, it's going to be a beautiful morning.
See ya!
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