I don’t know if you have the experience of being within earshot of teenager’s street slang, but the use of the word “be” functions as the only conjugation of the verb “to be” in many of their conversations.

Being a lover of English grammar, I find this deeply disturbing.  Maybe this is because I hear it spoken in classrooms, not just the hallways.  I fear that good grammar is dying and I am already grieving it’s demise.

I can easily see why teachers don’t correct students in class.  They would never have time to teach.  It is that pervasive.  And the thing that makes it worse, is that kids are mostly unaware of the fact that they are doing it.  I have experienced this.

One day, while working in a middle school, I corrected a girl in the hallway.  She turned and faced me directly and said, “But that don’t sound right!”  “That doesn’t sound right,” I replied.  She looked so confused, and I thought, “No wonder she doesn’t speak correctly.”  She never hears it.  

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am not saying that the teachers speak like the students.  It’s just that many of these kids don’t hear it at home or with their friends and the voices of the teachers aren’t as “loud”, so to speak.  They hear it alright.  I think that they just see it as a foreign language of sorts, and ignore it.  They are not really listening.  They are just hearing it peripherally.  It’s like background noise.

What worries me the most, is the fact that American English may be seen as an inferior language in the future.  I love the English language.  It is so rich and has it’s origins from so many different cultures.  It is spoken, albeit in different ways, in many different countries.  And I love that too.

There is even something to be said for slang because it can be very creative and every generation has it’s own.  It is something we can identify with from our own adolescence. But slang and dialects should be seen for what they are.  They should only be associated with a certain time or place or group.  

When “be” is used instead of “am”, “is”, or “are” in a sentence, it just sounds ignorant.  And that’s what bothers me the most.  Time will tell us whether this will carry into future generations.

Fun is necessary to a well-balanced life.   I learned this from my father.  He planned his fun.  He was the only adult I’ve ever known that did this.  It was on his list.

My dad was a business owner and had dozens of things to juggle.  Therefore, every night he would make a list of all the things that needed to be done.  It included things that were previously listed, but not finished, things that were happening the next day, plus future things that could possibly be done, if time permitted.  It was a long list, often written on graph paper, with the little boxes waiting to be checked as the tasks were completed.

The greatest thing about this list was that it always included something fun.  It may be going out to lunch, which he often did, or something else that was enjoyable.  But it always went on the list.  It was planned.

Planning fun, having something to look forward to, should be an everyday consideration.  It should be on a list, even if it’s only a mental one.  Fun should not be left to chance.

Dad always planned fun with my mom, family time, even time for himself.  I have always tried to emulate him and it has served me well.  You can make fun out of practically anything.  All it really takes is time and creativity.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money.  All you need to do is plan it.

In this life, we need to have things to look forward to.  We need to plan our fun.  It needs to be in the mix, especially when times are tough.  Plans can change, be postponed, or even cancelled once in awhile.  But planning is fun too.

The most important thing we can do as human beings is to have loving relationships.  And within these relationships, everything we do becomes more pleasurable.  And isn’t pleasure akin to fun?  Fun, enjoyment, pleasure, these are important things to consider.

If we plan, set aside time, and make it an important aspect of our lives, we are happier.  Our happy moments become memories.  And memories are fun too.

I have been thinking about the many different ways of learning.  In modern educational systems, this ideology of learning styles has come to the forefront.  In the not so distant past, school children were all expected to learn in the same way.  When a child didn’t learn the material easily, the child was often blamed.  The way in which it was presented was not even considered a possible reason for this failure to learn.  The worst part of this was that no attempt was made to do things differently.  It was the child’s fault.  

Today, we acknowledge visual learning, auditory learning, hands-on learning and cooperative learning, to name a few.  All the multiple ways of teaching children are essential to having an educated society.  To successfully compete in the job market and the world we need to understand the constantly changing information that surrounds us.  We need to have an intelligent population.

So now I come to the term, “learning by example.”  This phrase often refers to the way children learn to behave.  An infant learns how to act from the adults around him/her.  These “examples” are only as good as the people around us.  And when you are a child, you have no choice in what kind of parent, sibling, teacher, and neighbors you have.  It is the luck of the draw.

But since the most profound influence is a parent, the phrases “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” and “just a chip off the old block” were coined.  Of all the ways of learning, I believe “learning by example” is the most powerful force that influences any of our lives because it is relationship-based.  And the strongest relationship in a child’s life is their parent.

All of this means that the way to make society better is by having responsible adults around all of our children.  Of course the task of educating adults that have not themselves been given good examples is astronomical.  But in rising to this challenge, adults can make an enormous contribution to society’s future.

It is so easy for adults to throw up their hands and say, “I give up.”  But if the elders of our world would open themselves up to each opportunity that presents itself in front of young people, and take advantage of them to model respectful behavior in an obvious way, the world could become a kinder, more positive environment for learning of all kinds.  Learning and teaching by example just might be part of the solution to the problem of reaching all students and educating the population of the next generation.

I have a prediction.  Someday, most likely before I am gone, there will be a massive power outage, or a breakdown of fiber optic cable networks that store so many of our communications worldwide.  On this day, a widespread panic will ensue.  I cannot begin to fully comprehend, let alone describe the chaos this will cause, or its aftermath.  People will go crazy!

Not only do we have a young generation that is completely addicted to electronics of all kinds, even previous generations have jumped on this bandwagon, albeit to a lesser degree.

From my perspective, I have come to depend on my cell phone, for safety and for direct communication to my aging mother.  I enjoy internet access and social media.  It puts me in touch with people quickly and easily.  And I love the opportunity to communicate with those I love who live far away.  But truly, I can live without these things.  I have lived without them.

In spite of all the ways people now have for communication, many opt to use the ways that separate them from each other the most.  Internet games are played online with unseen opponents.  Texting is preferred over the telephone, even when driving.  Sadly, texting and playing on smartphones is preferred over face-to-face conversation.  I have often seen entire families sit and text or play games, while sitting together, and never even make eye contact with each other.

Online communication is done on smartphones.  Pictures are sent instantly across the world on tiny devices.  This is pretty spectacular stuff, up to a point.  The thing is, we are flying past that point, and to what end?  While technology is, in and of itself, a very good thing, it has caused deep, intimate interactions to fall by the wayside.

What does this mean?  I don’t know.  There are no easy answers to this question.  But it does need to be asked because people are addicted and vulnerable to manipulation by media that already makes us slaves to consumerism.  So much of our world is not real, but instead, virtual.  We are losing touch with each other.

I, for one, want to stay in touch and get to know the people around me.  I want deep relationships with my family and friends and those special ones I have yet to meet.  I can do without devices.  I can’t do without people.  I hope that there is a significant segment of our world population that feels this way too.

The longer I live, the more I see the value of being able to laugh at myself.  When I was young, I got my feelings hurt easily and it made me miserable.  I didn’t know it then, but I had a choice to accept or not accept things that were said about me or to me.  I was just a shy kid and I felt very insecure.

As time went on, I realized that one of the best things I could do, was to laugh at myself and not take myself so seriously.  When we let other people determine our opinion of ourselves, then we give our power away to people who do not care about us.

When I finally realized that I was doing this, I couldn’t believe that I had let it happen.  But, I needed to know what I was doing, before I could learn to deal with it.  When I did, it changed everything.

When someone tried to embarrass me, I realized that it said more about them than it did me.  When I made a mistake, I laughed first.  It made it funny and it took the pressure off.  I didn’t need to be trying to be perfect all the time.  I learned to revel in my imperfection.

I found that I could make people laugh and I loved it.  My favorite thing to do is to find the humor in a situation, and then share my perspective with others.  When they laugh at my jokes, I am in heaven.  I wish I had discovered this early on.  I might have become a comedienne.

Again and again I remember the influence of my father and his positive self-image.  He liked himself and did not let others make this determination for him.  I think it never even occurred to him that people would not like him.  It wouldn’t have mattered if they did or not anyway.  It would not have changed the way he felt about himself.

It has been said that laughing is good medicine.  I know that humor has made a positive impact on me for a long time now.  So, I intend to give myself a good dose of it for the rest of my life.