Ghosts of Christmas Future?

[I know I'm a little late with the holiday posts, but this slow Internet is kicking my poor blogging ass. Posting takes so long that it is now something that takes strategic planning ahead not something I can do in the ten minutes between when I roll out of bed and we have to get out the door. Anyone who knows me personally or even through the blog can attest that strategic planning ahead is not really in my nature. And, alas, ol' Saint Nick (in the form of a communications company of any sort) didn't come through with any options other than slower-than-death "hi-speed" dial-up. But in any case...here's a Christmas post.]

Christmas night (the night part of Christmas Day, as opposed to Christmas Eve), I am face-down in my pillow "zonked" as my mother used to say--probably snoring, definitely drooling, soundly, soundly asleep--when I'm awakened by a knock on the bedroom door. It is Son-Two coming to tell me, just a little after midnight, how much he loved the movie Failure To Launch which he just finished watching. For those unfamiliar with the movie, Matthew McConaughey's character is a thirty-something man who has lived at home so long that his parents enlist the help of Sarah Jessica Parker's character to trick him into moving out. Of course it ends up being a sappy romantic comedy but I couldn't help wondering if Son-Two was subconsciously trying to tell his mother something--like he has no plans to move out before his thirty-second birthday...?

In other Son-Two news, he continues to not (as the educational professionals are so found of saying) "work up to his potential." This is a subject with endless opportunities (if that's what you'd call them) for nagging on my part. One morning over Christmas break, we were on the way to his volleyball practice and I launched into a speech about how easy it is to get in the habit of expecting too little of yourself and how soon after you learn to accept too little from yourself you start to really doubt your ability to turn things around and it becomes a vicious black hole of low expectations and even lower rewards, making it clear all the while that I was speaking from a vast well of personal experience.

As we pulled up in front of the school, Son-Two deadpans, "Thanks for the pep talk."

I said, "That was no pep talk. It was a cautionary tale. It was a rare opportunity to learn from someone else's mistakes."

If I've learned anything from my own mistakes it's that learning from another's mistakes is as rare as eyebrows on an egg. And if I've learned anything from Hollywood romantic comedies, it's hire Sarah Jessica Parker to lure your adult son out of his cozy nest (even though Zoe Deschanel's character is much more appealing).

So at least I know I've got a plan.