By ROD WALTON Staff Writer on Sep 7, 2012, at 4:29 PM Updated on 9/07 at 4:29 PM
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I thought my youngest daughter was complimenting her way to a special request when she told me one morning that her brother and I were exactly alike.
“Really,” I said, proudly imagining comparisons of father-to-son virtue, courage, love of sports. “In what way?”
“In every way possible,” she said. Keep going.
“Well, it’s hard to explain, but you’re both kind of socially clueless.”
Well, that doesn’t sting at all and I have no idea what she’s talking about now.
But it got me to thinking about ways that children sometimes replicate us not only in looks, but in mannerisms and habits. For instance, I’m pretty sure my son has some of my noise sensitivity issues and hatred of all things vegetable as a youth. I was 30 before I tasted my first tomato voluntarily.
My daughters also share many of my greater and less characteristics, but for publication I’ll just focus on the good things.
Oldest daughter? She’s got my squinty eyes, forgiving nature and love of Beatles.
Second oldest? She’s smart and industrious. OK, that’s her mom’s qualities.
The youngest girl, so supposedly perceptive about her brother and I, is a wonderful tennis player, which I had some success at earlier in life.
Why should you care about this? No reason, really, just a blog noting how the good and bad in all of us can be handed down through the generations.
The good breeds charity, kindness and self-control, all of those fruits of the spirit. The bad gives form to the void of short tempers, racism and other things which tear down instead of build up.
“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them,” the author James Baldwin was quoted as saying. Preach it.
I remember the time in church one day years ago when the nursery worker brought my son to me and pointed out he had said a certain word. “Wherever would he have learned that?” she said, innocently or not.
You’re looking at the dirty scoundrel, I confessed. I only pass on the best I have.
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