{"id":30746,"date":"2016-06-17T16:27:10","date_gmt":"2016-06-17T22:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=30746"},"modified":"2016-06-17T16:27:10","modified_gmt":"2016-06-17T22:27:10","slug":"fathers-youre-never-too-old-to-inspire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/fathers-youre-never-too-old-to-inspire\/","title":{"rendered":"Fathers, you’re never too old to inspire"},"content":{"rendered":"

By TED ROBERTS, the SCRIBBLER ON THE ROOF<\/em><\/p>\n

I used to be a father. I still am, and now I\u2019m a grandfather, too. But it\u2019s a load I can handle because the job description is just about identical. It calls for inspiration – of young minds and young hearts; especially grandkids who are remote and therefore consider themselves safe from my constant inspirational messages.<\/p>\n

\"Ted_Roberts\"

So, I write a lot of letters to my grandkids. For only 49 cents (it goes up every year – no competition will do that every time) you\u2019re allowed a large number of words written on paper. And a wise grandfather, besides counsel, advice, and family gossip, can include a candy bar, a stick of gum, a newspaper clipping, or a baseball card to lure the young mind into the civilized joy of correspondence. What teacher ever taught successfully without incentives? It\u2019s a trick I learned years ago from the Crackerjack people. They marketed candy with cheap, fragile toys. I market family pride.<\/p>\n

History hints that Socrates – you\u2019ve heard of the Socratic School – kept a big jar of black olives beside his desk to reward precocious students and I do the same with my letters.<\/p>\n

I use wiles of all kinds to encourage my younger kin to rip open their envelopes with frantic enthusiasm. \u201cWonder what he sent this time? Maybe if I write back today, he\u2019ll send me another Hershey bar.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, Hershey bars are great. Nice and flat – but they have their disadvantages in July unless you live in Nome and your granddaughter hangs out with her kids in Anchorage. Kids love letters with or without sweet bonuses. They love their name in big, bold letters on the envelope. They love the ritual of sorting through the mail and throwing the discards on the floor before finding THEIR letter.<\/p>\n

And like I say, I rarely write without including something that is either amusing, edible, or ethically fortifying. My favorites are clippings from my local newspaper (human interest stories, we used to call them). So educational! Encourages kids to read and observe the world outside of home and school. And if you pick your stories with care, you can package amusement and even morality in your envelopes. For example, I just mailed off to eight grandkids a story of a 65 year old lady who wrote a confession to her high school principal; she cheated in a high school writing course 47 years ago! My small audience loved it and marveled at her delayed, but full confession.<\/p>\n

They were full of questions: \u201cDid she have to take the class over? Did she get a punishment? Did they send her a new report card? I assured them she was not punished and maybe – because of her honesty – they renamed the auditorium in her honor.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But my kids usually award the family Pulitzer Prize to the vignettes I call \u201cPet Saves Family\u201d: the collie who pulled Jamie out of the river. The cocker spaniel who barked and alerted the family to their smoldering home. And of course the whole category of dog-finds-missing-child story. We humans, even after we\u2019ve lost the glow of childhood, still have a soft spot for animal rescue stories. It goes back in history to the gabbling geese who saved Rome. A story probably told in a grandfather\u2019s letter of 300 BC.<\/p>\n

We don’t\u2019 always need burning homes and swollen rivers. Kids of the right age (say over 3 and under 10) love any animal story. Naturally. They love animals. There\u2019s a kinship there of smallness, innocence, helplessness that we just don\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n

Just this month I mailed out a tearjerker that couldn\u2019t fail to warm the juvenile heart. A two-column report of a three-legged dog – yes, a handicapped mutt who had lost a race with a truck and forfeited one of his four limbs – found a lost child. The sheriff and an army of searchers failed, noted the article, but the dog, only 75% effective, found the missing child.<\/p>\n

The returns from my young readers have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about this theme. More! they cry. They want more. But that\u2019s not so easy. I\u2019m at the mercy of the newspaper industry, which is attracted to war, corruption, crime, and disease rather than the uplifting genre of \u201cPet Finds Child\u201d.<\/p>\n

Besides the inspirational value, there\u2019s a selfish payoff to my letter writing campaigns: I like the return mail. And maybe decades from now when I\u2019m old and my pen trembles on the paper; and my poor old grinders are loose and wobbly, my mail will be full of attentive notes sweetened with easy to chew Hershey Bars. Bread on the waters, you know.<\/p>\n

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