Welcome to Spring Break!

This week is my children's spring break. Growing up, children did NOT get spring break; that only happened to college students on movies we weren't old enough to watch but did, anyway. Because if we had spring break, then we'd have a whole week of school to make up!

I really had teachers who believed that--that taking days off meant working twice as hard to "make up" the work. They didn't obviously didn't understand the words "schedule," "lesson plan," and "curriculum." I'm fairly sure that these were the same teachers who thought you had to go to church every week because God was taking attendance. God has a little chart where he tallies up the good things you've done, and then if you come out ahead of others who have been granted salvation--like murderers and such who only get salvation a week before they died so they've never actually done anything "good" or "right"--he gives you a nicer place in Heaven which has, I dunno, maybe more square footage of marble and gold floors in your apartment, or better food, or something?

You know what? My parents really believe that tally thing. They somehow tie it in with the parable of the Prodigal Son. You've heard it: two sons, and the father splits the estate. Then one son goes off and parties down in another country and squanders stuff, ends up working with pigs whom are fed better than him, and comes crawling back to his father. The father throws a party. The other son whines to the dad, I kissed your butt all along an you never threw a party for me! Wahhhh! To which the dad says, you've been with me all along but your brother was dead and now he's alive and that's why we celebrate.

The way I've always heard it told (in my super-strict, more Catholic than the Catholics Lutheran Church), there's a few more verses (from further on in the book of Matthew) where the loyal son is told he will get additional gifts for his loyalty, in Heaven.

BUT! I just read the parable in Matthew, and I can't find those follow-up verses. It's not like they're part of the same story. It's like--well, the creative editing you see on the news today.

Ya see, my parents always made us do things and told us we were getting brownie points in Heaven for it. Things like going along when they went to visit our great-aunts, where there were no toys, nothing to do, and a bunch of stuff that couldn't be touched. So they put us in a situation we resented, and put the aunts through additional stress (children in their home and no way to entertain them), and said it was GOOD? That God Would Want It That Way?

Um. No. Just no.

Which is why I try very hard to NOT bring my children to, nor put them in situations where they will be bored and resentful--not just at the time, but looking back from age 41 like I am--and say, "Why the FUCK did Mom make me do that and tell me it was somehow virtuous?"

Don't get me wrong--I'll still bring my kids to see their great aunts--not this week but some time in the future. I won't tell the kids it's because it will get them double-glazing in heaven, and I will let them bring their own toys to entertain themselves, just in case they need additional activities while we're there, and afterwards, we'll probably go to a hotel where there's a swimming pool, and we'll eat McDonald's and ice cream and candy.

Because there really was a reason that one son went prodigal in the first place.

He was on Spring Break.