Missing in Action: Parents Who Don't Take Things Seriously

Ian is only ten, so I'm encouraged by the fact that he won't manifest any adolescent traits for at least another three years.  And yet, as he gets older, he seems to discover character flaws in me, his father, that I had never managed to recognize in myself for all of thse long decades of my life.  And tonight he made an observation that I find very alarming:  Ian asserts that I never take anything that he likes seriously, unless it's something that I disapprove of.  Of course, when I disappove of something, seriousness kicks in with a vengeance.  Yet when I don't find something that he likes to pose a  physical/spiritual/developmental danger, I fail altogether to recognize its serious value.

There are many, many things of which I disapprove in our society - video games and creepy or foul-mouthed television are toward the top of the list in terms of day-to-day bouts of conflict and Angst.  But as for the matter of not taking seriously that small set of things that Ian likes that I don't find problematic - this is a new accusation.  Of course, I had the good sense to ask Ian what it is, in this special category, that I don't take seriously - in concrete terms.

To my astonishment, the very first item on the list of Not-Completely-Disapproved-of-and-Yet-Not-Taken-Seriously-Things-That-Ian-Likes was, of all things, Pokemon.

I can't imagine why Ian would think that I don't take Pokemon seriously.  I do!  But I wasn't going to argue the point.

Second on the list was Percy Jackson.  Ian doesn't like it when I refer to that quality children's fiction series as "Jesse Jackson"; of course, he also has no idea who Jesse Jackson is...  I think he's troubled that I characterized a typical volume of this set, which brings ancient mythological characters into the postmodern world  and the lives of troubled young people, as "Athena Goes to the Zoo."  He was amused at the time - or so it seems - but apparently now he takes this kind of off-the-cuff parody as an indication of unseriousness about the genre itself.  This heavy charge leaves me speechless.

Or near-speechless.

But it does get me thinking about what it is that made me this way - if the lad's characterization of me has any merit - and now I think I know who is really to blame for all of this:

It's my own father's fault.  I'm just visiting the same neglect on Ian that I endured during and beyond my most formative years.

My father certainly didn't take seriously the things that I liked.  Of course, he also disapproved of many of them - even more, I'd say, than my lengthy disapproval roster for Ian's enthusiasms, if such a thing can be imagined.  I can't really take the time to slice my own youthful likings into discrete categories of things-my-father-disapproved-of and things-my-father-didn't-take-seriously; the overlap might be overwhelming.  Instead, to try to work through this crisis, I thought I'd make a less-than-comprehensive list of the things that I liked and my father failed to take seriously during the 29 years we had together, in chronological order:

- Sesame Street
- Captain Kangaroo
- Family Affair
- The Andy Griffith Show
- The Brady Bunch
- The Partridge Family
- Zoom
- The Beatles
- Marlo and the Magic Machine
- Animal Posters
- Pepperoni Pizza
- Jimmy Carter
- The Electric Light Orchestra (a.k.a. ELO)
- The BeeGees
- Saturday Night Live
- Saturday Night Fever
- Grease
- John Updike
- The Rainbow Coalition
- Antiwar Protests
- The Green Tortoise
- Mexico
- The Kids in the Hall
- David Letterman
- Chocolate Croissants
- Dark Roast Coffee
- Canadian Beer

And this list barely scratches the surface!

None of these categories were serious matters in my father's life, yet I spent much time and energy pursuing them, and, in many cases, talking about them to anyone who would listen.  

So Ian is certainly not alone in his experience of parental thematic neglect.  I guess I just didn't realize that this is history repeating itself, with me as the missing link between the out-of-touchness of past generations and the unseriousness that I turn out to be perpetuating even now, in the 21st century.

Teach your parents well!

(April 8, 2014)