This one is called:
Theories on Family Time (I've been told it's pretty realistic...) (2nd place winner of the Fitchburg State Essay Contest!
)The theory on family time is this: if you spend an extended period of time with your family having fun and enjoying yourselves, you will learn to love an care for one another. You may even be so lucky as to form a few lasting bonds of friendship and trust. There are many, many holes in this theory, and I would like to spend a moment of my time to point them out to you.
The first thing is that family time, in theory, should be something that the entire family wants to do, something that they view as enjoyable, interesting. In my family, there is no choice. Family time does not just happen. Family time is something that needs careful planning by both my parents. Something that is kept hidden from us, the children, until the very last minute so that we can have no way to wriggle out of it. Invariably, though, both my brother and I will do our best to “have plans”, or realize that we “have a test the next day”. This never works, because “family is more important than friends”, and “you should have been studying earlier, when I saw you on the computer”. Mind you, this is just an example of one family, but it would not surprise me unduly to find other families are the same, or at least similar.
The second flaw is the concept that your family, if it spends a great deal of time alone and together, will learn to love and cherish one another. Here’s a little example to showcase what I’m trying to say. Say you had a group of five people who severely disliked one another, and you locked them into a room for an hour. Now say you open the door once the hour was done. Do you think you would find those 5 people happily talking and learning about shared interests, or 4 corpses and the knowledge that the one left is now considered criminally insane? If you need family time to learn to like one another, chances are you don’t like each other to start, and that is no good way to start an extended period of time alone together.
The third problem is the thought that family can form lasting bonds of friendship and mutual trust. You can also do this with every person on the face of the planet if you are willing to spend time with him or her and be nice. The difference though is that with a remark and a gesture, someone from the face of the planet can go from bonds of friendship to hating your guts, and they won’t forgive you unless they’re very dumb, have little to no memory, or are too kind for their own good. With family, it is thought that with enough time, even the most cruelly severed bonds can be rebuilt. Which means that your entire family has little to no memory, is to kind for their own good, or are dumb as posts... Ok, so maybe some theories about family time are mostly true, but I still have a few more arguments to make in my defense.
Now to the fourth thing about family time, the theory that it will help you ‘grow’. The greatest mystery to this theory is what exactly grow means in that context. Most parents might say that it means that family time builds character. When questioned to what exactly building character does, they might often say that it makes you into a better person. When asked how exactly that it makes you a better person, the most common and expected response is that family time lets you grow. Now, this is not always true. Some parents, after the fifth or so cycle through the questions, will realize they’re repeating themselves, and try to come up with a decent answer. Some examples are “you learn empathy”, or “you get a better understanding of how a family’s supposed to work”, or , “you learn from us.” Why exactly the parents are supposed to be better people than their kids are is probably because they’ve had the benefit of many more years of family time.
And finally, the fifth the reason, my personal favorite. That the family will enjoy their time with one another. Let us once again set up a situation to make this a bit clearer. Here is a group of people with very different personalities and tastes, going out on expedition designed entirely by the two members of the group who hold the power. Please also note that those two people generally have desires to educate and enrich the lives of the other people in the group, whether they like it or not. Now listen to this sentence, and think about whether or not it makes any sense: All of the people in that group will have a good time.
I could, of course, continue my explanation of the ludicrous concept of family time, but I think I have made my point well enough as is. Family time can be a good thing, if given in small doses and at the consent of all involved, but rarely does this happen. Usually parents may try to get at least an hour of family time every week, and have an amazing ability to schedule it whenever you want to go out with friends, and then make sure you go to the one place you were positive that even your parents wouldn’t consider a good place to go. And of course, other people will disagree with me, and say family time is always a good thing, and of course there will be examples of families who enjoy their time together, and actually benefit from it. I just happen to hold the rather pessimistic view that those groups are definitely not the majority.
Anyway, thanks for reading the rant (if you've gotten this far, poor soul). Bye
It is my solace, my home, the place where my walls crumble and fall away, because no one can know who I truly am. Thank goodness for the Internet, preserver of sanity! -Unknown
Edited by: MellindraX at: 4/8/03 6:05:48 pm
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