Remember: you are your child's first teacher

We arrived in Memphis, Tennessee today. And what an improvement over Little Rock, Arkansas. I'm certainly not an authority when it comes to comparing these two cities, but I can say that our 3.5 hours spent in Memphis has already totally outshined the 20 hours we spent in Little Rock. When we got to our hotel today Jackson noticed a bible sitting out on the bedside table. It wasn't hidden away in the drawer like at most hotels, just waiting to be discovered. It was just out there not even pretending that there might be hotel guests who may not be interested in taking comfort in its pages. As if.

"They have a bible here?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"They want you to read it."

"The whole thing? Why"

"So you'll be saved and go to Heaven."

"Saved from who?"

"Yourself."

Teachable moments. See how well I exploited that one? Now before you start sending me hate mail and damning me to Hell I should explain that it's been a long trip and I didn't have the energy to go into any further detail at that moment. And Jackson and I have been having some pretty meaningful talks on religion lately. That just wasn't one of them.

In Jackson's "What Your First Grader Should Know" they have several chapters on the major religions. And the reason we're reading this book is because the hippie school that we sent Jackson to for 2 years hasn't done much to prepare him for the harsh reality of public education. I bet your thinking this is a bad thing..... Anyway, we read about Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Hinduism and Buddhism are discussed in the subsequent second grade book because those are for the more advanced reader. Crap. I didn't really mean that. But the Eastern religions are what all the cool kids are into these days. Anyway, after our reading we had a nice discussion about Jesus. Now I'm not a big subscriber to any one religion but I do take interest in Jesus as an historical figure. But that whole son of God, died for our sins stuff is where I draw the line. Seriously, why did people have to take a perfectly nice man with a pretty fucking profound message and make him such a point of contention? So I talked with Jackson about loving the sinner not the sin blah blah blah.... and a few days later we were making a list of friends he could invite to the waterpark in our old town as a sort of going away thing. He mentioned a couple of children who he has always complained about. One in particular was a bit of a bully so I told Jackson not to invite him because then it wouldn't be fun for anyone. Jackson came right back at me with Jesus' message of love for everyone. And that, my 5 loyal readers, is how I was put in my place by my 7 year old son. We ended up not inviting the bully and probably made Jesus cry.