A critical mind

Daejeong, le 15 mars 2021

This is from a while ago but looking at where my daughters are now, it’s a story I like to remind myself of sometimes.

Since becoming parents, Stephanie and I tried to teach our daughters to have critical minds. They are all smart so they got it pretty quickly. Of course, we are the ones whom experienced their first ventures into critical thinking. It got them to reflect and not take everything for granted (even if it came from their parents), to make up their own minds and, sometimes, to get out of jams.

In school, Jessica and Annie, our second and third daughters, were close and in the same grade so they often had the same friends. As teenagers, they were social (understatement) and their group of friends was very large. They came to our house often and I had a lot of pleasure laying low and listening to them address the topics of the day. I often thought to myself that the future of the world was in good hands.

We lived in a very large house that could comfortably accommodate the seven of us. All girls had their own room and we had an extra bedroom for visitors. In their last year of high school, Jessica and Annie started talking about moving out to share a place with two girl friends. After discussions that went on for some months, my wife and I decided to accept a proposal to share our house with them. The four of them would live upstairs. The rest of our family would be downstairs. We had a common entrance and inside porch.

At that time, Stephanie and I worked together in our own company managing non profit housing. Our office was in our house so we were often at home. The four teenagers started living upstairs in the summer immediately after graduating high school. We saw them on a daily basis but not as often as before. Problems arose but were not so bad at first, nothing much that we had not anticipated. As the summer went on, this co-existence got more difficult for us. They lived at night and we had difficulty sleeping. We all agreed that when school started again in September, our schedules would be more synchronized.

Here is where it gets minds going. One afternoon in the late summer, there is a knock at the door. My daughter Alexandra, our twelve year old, answers. A young man says he was paged to this address. As I mentioned, our office is in the house so both Stephanie and I are present. We go to the door to hear this guy say “You paged me”. “We did not” I reply. He gets upset but leaves. Alex then says “Maybe it’s for upstairs”. She then proceeds to climb up. Quickly Annie comes down and explains that the man was there to deliver goods to her and that she was not very happy that we had sent him away. “What goods?” I ask. After some hesitation, Annie answers “We want to buy marijuana”. To which I reply “No way are you getting that delivered to our house!”.

A few minutes later, after consulting with her roommates, Annie, their spokesperson, is back down again.

“You know we smoke sometimes don’t you?”

“Of course we do.”

“Well, what’s the problem?”

“The problem is I don’t want a drug dealer at my door, at my house.”

“You have stuff delivered here all the time.”

“Not from strangers”

“The plumber was here last week. Did you know him?”

“I know the plumber does not buy his pipes from the Hell’s Angels.”

“Do you prefer we buy our drugs in a back alley?”

“I prefer you don’t invite drug dealers to the house where your little sisters, your mother and I live.”

“But…

“There are no buts, this is not a discussion, this is a decision and it’s over.”

I guess there are limits to what a critical mind can do.

I also have to end this by stating how proud I am of our five grown daughters. Annie has become an accomplished social worker specialized in youth intervention. Jessica is soon to graduate and become a sexologist.