Being the baby of the family isn’t always the glamorous position that everyone might think it is. While there are some perks to this position of having the older siblings get in trouble for you because they are responsible, there is sometimes the opposite effect because you are the youngest, therefore blamed for everything.

Since you’re the child bringing up the rear of the family, you may be the family’s last hope for achievement if your other older siblings have ‘failed’ your parents in some way. You also may have it tougher in the discipline department because your parents discovered what mistakes they made with your older siblings because they were too lenient with them.

You are the wearer of the hand-me-down, hand-me-down, hand-me-down…. And your parents may be too tired to do things with you by the time they are done raising all your older siblings so you may not get to do all the activities that your older siblings did. But on the flip-side, you may get to do more because your folks are feeling ‘empty nest’ syndrome and they hang onto you tightly and want to do all the things with you they didn’t have time for with the others.

It’s a very unique position to be in – to be the baby of the family. Most likely you will have to take on quite the load in caring for aging parents also – because your older siblings will be too busy with families of their own.

But there is hope for you. As the observer you can watch all that came before you – including your siblings, your parent’s ever-changing behavior and society. Unless your parents had the kids in your family back-to-back every year- there’s a pretty good bet that there is at least 5 or even up to 10 or more years between you and your oldest sibling. Times change and this can be to your advantage.

Seeing this while growing up gives you leverage in being more adaptable to life, life’s changes and challenges and you have more flexibility in your overall personality and coping nature in daily life. As the world changes, you can readily adapt with it a bit more easily than your older siblings. You have the role of ‘teacher’ – and can teach your nieces, nephews, older siblings and aging parents a thing or two as the world progresses. This is your opportunity to be the educational cohesive component in your family unit. This not only will provide you with essential life skills to handle it better than most, but you have a chance to be more of a humanitarian/good will peacemaker in your family as well.

You can help your family adjust better to life/death situations that will inevitably come up and be the stronger and the wiser for it. Wisdom is priceless.

Ultimately it’s the youngest child who has the opportunity to help the pull all of the family pieces together and help older siblings see the bigger picture.

***** STAY TUNED FOR PART FOUR ***** THE ONLY CHILD

http://www.100percentrealwords.blogspot.com

© 2010 Queena Verbosity 100% Real Words
Media Monster Communications, Inc.
Stacey Kumagai
http://hubpages.com/profile/mediamonster http://www.braingasm.com

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE. Yes, this is common – the middle child syndrome. This is why “Jan” on the Brady Bunch couldn’t deal – Marcia was the popular oldest, Cindy was the baby and coddled. This may have been TV, but it is more real-to-life than most people understand, however, each ‘position’ (oldest, middle, younger, even only children) all have their issues – feeling pressures that others don’t feel.

Middle children have a different way of exercising their need to be heard, seen, understood and related to. Whether YOU are this middle child or whether your spouse is, or maybe you are trying to help your own son/daughter being the middle child – whatever the case, there is a way.

Your older and younger siblings have their issues, too. The older one has to be the leader, lead by example…. and best not fail, or otherwise shows as a poor example to you and your younger sibling. Your younger sibling as to deal with your parents freaking out over ‘empty nest syndrome’ – and will most likely is the one to have to care for them when they age. Everyone has pressures.

What YOU need to do is understand that you are special no matter what. While it is hard to ignore how the family breakdown occurs because of birth positioning…. USE YOUR MIDDLE CHILD POSITION as a way to understand the family better than anyone else. This doesn’t mean you need to be forced into feeling like the glue, but in essence YOU ARE… you are the force that binds the family together. And while that may seem like an uncelebrated position, or seem like one that doesn’t get the perks, YOU my friend are positioned to handle life as a survivor.

When the s**t hits the fan, who is going to be the one who survives? YOU! When life gets difficult and challenging, you’re going to be the one to adapt well, understand the dynamics of your own family that you have when you are married and have kids. YOU will be one to examine a situation at work better because you understand the behavior of others well and know how to work in a challenging situation.

And you will work harder and strive to be more of an achiever (thus very successful) in life, because you are striving for your own light to shine – something you’ve had to do since you were a little kid.

Take a deep breath. Take a step back. And as you look at your siblings…. know they may seem to have it easy now, but when you get older, you will have it a lot easier, because in the real world, life outside your family’s door – not everyone gets what they want and things are not handed to people just because they want it or need it – they have to work hard it. And this may be a scenario your siblings may have problems adjusting to because they were not conditioned to this kind of flexibility now.

***** STAY TUNED FOR PART THREE ***** THE OMEGA CHILD

http://www.100percentrealwords.blogspot.com

© 2010 Queena Verbosity 100% Real Words
Media Monster Communications, Inc.
Stacey Kumagai
http://hubpages.com/profile/mediamonster http://www.braingasm.com

Are you the first-born child? Congratulations. You have all the glory and a heck of a lot of responsibility. If you are the first born child, chances are you are the child your parents made all their mistakes with – so you have a lot of scars. From good ol’ dad walking with you on his shoulders not realizing that this added height has consequences of many knocks to the head (oops), to finding out that not all the cabinets in the house are baby-proofed… you have survived all this!

You are also the one that all the fundamental errors were made with as well. To top all this off – you also may have the responsibility over looking over your younger siblings, being the first one out of the house and also being the ‘example’ for your other siblings to follow. You may also be the first one responsible for going off to college or going out into the work world or maybe even responsible for financially helping your folks out to raise the rest of the kids. Such pressure!

But don’t despair – you have an opportunity to shine without having to be the super star.

First, take the pressure off of yourself. Just because you are the first born doesn’t mean you are expected to ‘do it all’ and ‘be all.’ If you think THIS – then you will certainly turn out to be the unhappy perfectionist.

And if you are a perfectionist…This is why you are not happy. And this is normal. Over-achievers are just that… they want to over achieve.

Thus… if you got a 92% on a test, you are not happy because you really wanted 100% and think of yourself as failing somehow, EVEN THOUGH YOU DID NOT.

You have to realize, that perfectionists always perform or desire to perform at an A++ level. The average person who has a healthy perspective is ‘okay’ or ‘satisfied’ and content, as well as accepting of anything over a C+.

Even when you are performing at what YOU think is a C level at any given time, it is always an A level to most people.

The ‘acceptance’ part of your over-achieving personality is your life lesson and what needs the work.

You have to also be thankful for the gifts that you have.86% is great and wonderful!!!! You have to learn that happiness is about acceptance. Accept who you are at any level of performance. This is the secret to real success.

Later on in life, this will become more vital… particularly in team situations, where each person will need to be a team player and carry equal parts of the load on a work project or whatever…. you will have to learn at that point that you have to come to a point of ‘doing the very best you can’ and knowing you carried your share of the work and being content with ‘how you showed up’ and how you contributed and what the end result was with YOUR performance, regardless of anything else.

Critiques/criticism…. Whether it’s from a boss, a teacher, even a loved one – it only makes you stronger, gives you room for growth and evolvement/development as a person, but also gives you insight to how you accept and receive criticism and praise.

Don’t make the mistake of declining your birth role either. You do not have to make yourself invisible for the pressure to be off of you, either. Don’t make the mistake of being an under-achiever, just to get all eyes to be off of you. You can take on a supporting role as much as you can take on the role of a leader. And the sooner you learn this, the better off you will be.

The only ‘pressure’ is one that you enable and allow others to put on you. You have to accept yourself as you are – and know that as long as you show up in life and do your best – this IS INDEED GOOD ENOUGH. It doesn’t have to be A++++ and blue ribbon 24/7. Such behavior can only lead to disappointment later in life and a horrible midlife crisis.

So enjoy your role as the first born and instead be a system of support to your younger siblings and a support system to your parents. This alone is of great value without having to be all things. Support and love go a long way and the more you exercise this on yourself, to put give yourself the place of strength, the easier it will be, to be the first born. The only real pressure is the one you place on yourself. So let that go and you will be free to be the best that you can be as you are without the added laundry list of things that come with being first born.

***** STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO ***** MIDDLE CHILD SYNDROME

http://www.100percentrealwords.blogspot.com

© 2010 Queena Verbosity 100% Real Words
Media Monster Communications, Inc.
Stacey Kumagai
http://hubpages.com/profile/mediamonster http://www.braingasm.com

For the nostalgic scribe, a pencil is and always will be the missed tool of choice in the computer age. There is something about a pencil. The smell of graphite, the earthy wood shavings, the raspy sketch of the pencil touching paper… it’s a beautiful symphony all by itself.

I remember as a child being given the plastic hand sharpener in a school box of supplies. This was a neat – to have your own hand sharpener. But in the garage was an old, antique looking metal sharpener that was mounted to the top of a wooden cabinet. The sharpener looked like some machine, yet it was utilitarian in use – it was manual, you had to hand-crank it to sharpen your pencil. Hearing the grinding sound as you cranked your hand around and around was hypnotic, beautiful and when you were done sharpening your pencil, you just wanted to dig in your pencil box for more to sharpen because you didn’t want the sound to end.

Then there was the emptying of this chamber that was interesting all on its own. The ground up metallic looking bits of pencil lead were a smoky charcoal grey powder and the fine shavings weren’t like the hamster bedding you’re used to seeing with the plastic personal sharpener at school. These shavings were so fine, they looked like saffron threads, curly and intertwined into a poofy pile of Barbie hay. There wasn’t really anything you could do with this, but it seemed a shame to throw it away.

When the electric pencil sharpener came out that was really exciting. The revved up motor was a thrilling change and you couldn’t possibly over-sharpen. It stopped automatically when you were done and yes, the shaving chamber produced the same type as the hand crank ones. Though it wasn’t as archaic as the hand-crank one that reminded you of the musty smell of library books, it did the job and was a very advanced change in electronics.

Let’s not forget the eraser. Not just the convenient JuJuBee sized niblet on the top of the pencil (which always seemed to disappear, long before the pencil shortened)… but I am talking about the beautiful choices in erasers – from the long bubble-gum pink rectangle eraser to the gooey white and animated character erasers that became all the rage when Hello Kitty came onto the scene.

In 1st grade, there was a very kind girl in my class named Diane who shared her lunch with me when someone stole my lunch. And to thank her, I remember getting her this fancy circle eraser that was on a roller. It came with a brush on the other end to ‘dust away’ the eraser bits. She was excited and thought it was really cool. I remember the other kids in the class all wanted one and how proud Diane was to whip out the eraser and use it to erase a ‘mistake.’ The thing was, Diane was a smart girl and she didn’t make many mistakes. But it was fun to pretend to erase and use this new fangled gadget.

It was also where ‘drawing with an eraser’ became the greatest insurance to draw freehand without making a pencil mistake. Who knew?

I miss the days of the pencil. Today, pencil isn’t so much a noun as it is a verb. “I’ll pencil you in my calendar.” The sad part is, this is a lie. Today calendars are on computers and in Blackberry phones and the only ‘pencil’ that is used is a skinny piece of black plastic that touches a screen.

But pencils are still needed at the DMV, the infamous number two pencil is still needed for scholastic tests and pencils are still used in Bingo. So there is hope that even in this electronic hi-tech age, that pencils won’t die. Greenies like computers because it means using less pencils and saving more trees. And I get this.

Though I think there is something to be said for the pencil and its longevity in a time when so many other things have become obsolete altogether. It has lived longer than the erasable pen – and that’s a whole other blog.

The pencil. From sketch to scribe, it’s something we really can’t and shouldn’t ever be without.

http://www.100percentrealwords.blogspot.com

© 2010 Queena Verbosity 100% Real Words
Media Monster Communications, Inc.
Stacey Kumagai
http://hubpages.com/profile/mediamonster http://www.braingasm.com

There are sometimes some people in your life who are always looking down. Even when things are looking up for them, they’re not appreciating the daily blessings of life.

I cannot feel empathy for these people anymore, because it just brings me down. I have come to realize that no matter how positive you try to be and to help guide them and show them the beauty of what their life holds – they don’t want to see it. They will tell you ‘yeah, you’re right…’ but then do nothing about their situation. Most of the stuff they are miserable about is the situation they created for themselves.

They say that life teaches you lessons over and over until ‘you get the lesson.’ Perhaps this is the perspective most people should take, when griping about their mundane and petty problems.

At some point each person becomes responsible for their actions and reactions in life. And if they live a life without optimism, a life without faith and conviction in the positive – they are not people of gratitude.

I always say that an attitude of gratitude will give you inner peace and create peace for all those around you. We are not born to only have things handed to us. We have to work for them and work at our own lives each day.

A lot of people get lazy, they don’t want to do the work and they want things to come easy. But the truth is life is not easy – because if it were easy, we honestly wouldn’t appreciate it when things are glorious.

The old sitcom, “The Facts of Life” has a fabulous campy theme song, but one that I love. “You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have… the facts of life.”

This couldn’t be more true. We have to have down moments in order to appreciate when things look up. Yes. But if we CHOOSE TO LOOK UP even when a situation puts us in a challenging time or a down mood, we will have peace all the time. It’s just one of the many beautiful gifts in life that we are given — freely, upon our own free will to receive it.

So when things are down, if you look up – you will start to see only the upside of life. And then you know you are really living.

Blessings to you. May you always look to the upside.

http://www.100percentrealwords.blogspot.com

© 2010 Queena Verbosity 100% Real Words
Media Monster Communications, Inc.
Stacey Kumagai
http://hubpages.com/profile/mediamonster http://www.braingasm.com

Baseball shows you where life is at…
And what matters most, is that you go up to bat.
Perhaps you’ll strike out –
Maybe you’ll hit a home run.
But if you only get to walk…
It’s about having fun.
What’s in your swing?
Is it with all your might?
Do you play with passion?
Are you in for the fight?
Go into the outfield –
Be part of the team…
It’s what you’ve got to do,
to fulfill your dream.
You have to give it your all.
And be ready to work.
There is no easy street,
flooded with perks.
Everything comes at a price,
And this you must know –
If it seems easy now,
You’ll have it harder – when you grow.
Invest time base-to-base.
Pay your dues and respect –
For that is how you must play,
if you wish to collect a check.
Catch the errors of your ways,
And be on pitch every time.
Be a good sport.
Don’t pout and whine.
Show up and be there,
Leave your ego at the door.
It’s not all about you,
Or how much you score.
It’s about taking the time,
To be thankful for blessings –
And to have faith and belief,
And no second guessings.
Life’s about sharing and giving,
Expressing how you feel,
Being truthful to everyone,
And keeping it real.
Life’s not about losses,
Or each victory –
It’s about doing something that matters,
With your soul peaceful and free.
Life’s about caring and loving,
Consciousness and thought,
Positive actions –
And giving it all you’ve got.
It’s about taking the time,
To say ‘I’ll be there for you…’
And honoring your word,
In everything you do.
You may be on a team,
But you’ll be all alone –
If you don’t remember what matters,
when you slide into home.

http://www.100percentrealwords.blogspot.com

© 2010 Queena Verbosity 100% Real Words
Media Monster Communications, Inc.
Stacey Kumagai
http://hubpages.com/profile/mediamonster http://www.braingasm.com

Back in the 70s, I used to watch a variety of talk shows. And every so often I would see a hypnotist appear as a guest on one of these shows. It always amazed me to see random guests pulled from the audience who could suddenly go to sleep at the snap of a finger. My mother told me that they were plants, that the whole thing was fake and that I shouldn’t believe any of this stuff.

As I got older, I used to find hypnotists amusing and entertaining – making people cluck like chickens and doing odd things on stage. But as the years went on, I would see hypnotists become part of therapy – people would be hypnotized out of their grief or quit smoking or eliminate trauma from their minds that they saw while serving in war. Hypnotherapy soon changed my perspective on what hypnotism could and couldn’t do.

While in grade school one of my classmates was stung by a jellyfish one summer while playing at the beach. She was traumatized by the beach and would freak out while watching Jacques Cousteau on television. She went to counseling, talked to her clergy. But nothing worked. And it always made me wonder what happened to her and if she ever considered any kind of hypnotherapy to overcome her fear over the beach, or if she is merely going through life now avoiding the beach altogether. If she is avoiding the beach, this makes me sad, because the beach itself is a hypnotic escape.

During the holidays, many people sit in front of their fireplace and watch the fire as if it were television. It’s a hypnotic state of just sitting, being, enjoying and escaping into its warmth.

To me, this is hypnotherapy of sorts – it’s about mentally escaping. And if you’ve ever watched a flicker turn into a flame, grow into a fire and then die down, smoldering into illuminating orange coals, you understand what I am talking about in this 2-3 hour therapeutic carpet ride.

You don’t really reflect on anything – it’s just about ‘shutting off.’ You’re completely aware of its warmth as much as you are of safety precautions, and even the whistling bits of water evaporating from the wood and the snaps of bark or a tiny spider are not enough to completely take you out of the daze, which this glow has transported you to.

It doesn’t have to be a winter warm-up, a holiday or even a summer camp fire roasting marshmallows for an escape to be taken. A hypnotic escape like this can be taken at anytime… anywhere. Whether it’s the beach, browsing in a quiet library, fishing on a lake, walking in the park, or sitting on your front porch, just watching the world go by…. A hypnotic escape is necessary in life – so that when we return to reality, we can appreciate all of our blessings.

http://www.100percentrealwords.blogspot.com

© 2010 Queena Verbosity 100% Real Words
Media Monster Communications, Inc.
Stacey Kumagai

http://hubpages.com/profile/mediamonster

http://www.braingasm.com

Many eons ago, I was working at Disneyland. Suddenly, upon the audience exiting, I saw a tour group pressing their hands and bodies against the wall of the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln theatre. “America The Beautiful” was playing. They were feeling the vibration of the wall and humming. I saw a few people in the group signing, and I was excited to see this.

Never before has my awareness been heightened about how difficult the English language is, more than when dealing with deaf culture. Sign language isn’t universal. As I was hand-spelling English words with my fingers, it became quite obvious the deaf tour group was foreign, as I was trying to sign to a person who didn’t speak English.

The other day, I saw a little boy point at the doggy in the window and declare to his mother that even dogs have first names and middle names… and the one he was looking at was named Jack Russell. I had to laugh. It was pretty interesting for him to put that together, without realizing that was indeed the breed of the dog. And while this would be a cute observation just watching any kid declare this, it was interesting because this child was speaking fragmented and broken English. It made me realize that we use hundreds of words each day, and perhaps of all languages, English must be the most confusing.

We have homonyms like THEIR, THERE and THEY’RE. Those are probably just as confusing as the synonyms little and small. We have street slang, business lingo and never mind the made-up words and acronyms texting technology has created for us like LOL, LMAO and BFF.

In everyday English, we use French words on our American menus for cuisine isn’t French at all, like “Soup Du Jour” at a truck stop diner. And we use terms like ‘bring home the bacon.’ We don’t literally mean stop at the grocery store and pick up a pound of the breakfast meat, but rather bring home your paycheck.

We have cutesy supplements we add to people’s names, like Kelly-Belly, Sher-Bear, Silly-Billy and Slim Jim. It does not mean that Kelly is fat, Sher is a grizzly, Billy is silly or Jim is too skinny. But I guess to someone just learning English for the first time, this might be confusing as they may think we’re offending someone or criticizing them, when we’re merely accenting with adoration as we say their name.

Then we have names for things in the animal kingdom like CATFISH, BULLFROG, FOXHOUND, SPIDER MONKEY and BIRDDOG. And none of these animals have actually mated with one another to create such an animal hybrid species. How do you explain THIS to a person who is learning English? It may not make any sense and only further confuse the process of learning our language.

Foreign people are not deaf, but I have observed human nature take over in people shouting louder as if to get their message across.

Many people complain about pressing 1 for English, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on voicemail systems for other languages and having DMV tests and voting ballots instructions in other languages. Basic street signs in other countries don’t accommodate the English-speaking to tell us where to go or how to do things But the one thing which has become obvious to me is that there is a Universal language:

a smile, a wave, music, dance, animals, nature, food and kindness. These are the things which bring people together, unite us in joy and unite us in spirit. And it’s these things which you really don’t need words for at all.

http://www.100percentrealwords.blogspot.com

© 2010 Queena Verbosity 100% Real Words
Media Monster Communications, Inc.
Stacey Kumagai

http://hubpages.com/profile/media

Andy Warhol was a genius. And if he were alive today, he’d marvel in the prediction he made about everyone being famous for fifteen minutes. While he was able to see his prediction come true before his death in the late 80s, today he would see an entirely different circus happening with reality television, mobile technology and the Internet.

But I think he’d be more intrigued with the biggest puppet show on Earth and how his quote merges so beautifully with super-genius, William Shakespeare. Shakespeare’s quote, “All The World’s A Stage….” applies today more so than ever before. And everyone is indeed, ‘playing their part.’

While watching these birds, I had to laugh. With everything that is happening in the world, even the animal kingdom is taking note and striking poses. The twist of a head, the straight on look of the eyes…it made me more aware of how conscious everyone is becoming of the camera.

In a nearby neighborhood, I watched kids do stunts on their skateboards because they want to be the next Tony Hawk or the next Jack Ass star, not because they actually want to do a fun sport for the heck of it, or be physically fit, enjoy time with siblings and friends, or even enjoy the great outdoors. There is an agenda and they are using the street as their ‘stage.’ They too, are looking for their 15 minutes.

While people were line waiting to by their Lotto ticket, I overheard a conversation… a teenager was talking about what he would do with all the money if he won, and mentioned he’d make a movie which he’d star in. While most teens wouldn’t say ‘I’ll put money toward my education’ – I guess I wasn’t really expecting to hear something so …. Fame-seeking.

During the holidays, I had noticed that as many children lined up to sit on Santa’s lap, Santa wasn’t really the star anymore, he had become merely a prop of sorts while on-lookers were gearing up their digital cameras and cell phones and taking photos and footage of each other. Everyone was more interested in gaining their 15 minutes of fame, and Santa was NOT the attraction. And this wasn’t the only place. Santa was walking around the IHOP roaming the restaurant for attention awaiting the gasp, the ‘ooh and ahh’ with eyes of surprise from many a child, but he never got it. Instead, people were playing with their cell phones, viewing pictures, talking about how they were going to enter them in contests, but NOT taking pictures of Santa. He knew his 15 minutes of fame was up… or maybe people just didn’t recognize him because he had gotten thinner. To his own admission, he gave into the Lap Band. This was ironically funny because the Lap Band commercials actually do run on television every 15 minutes. But witnessing this – made me realize, just as new 15 minutes-of-famers climb on the scene, others who had it for awhile are getting bypassed.

What has happened to our ‘stage’…? You know, the real stage which is being upstaged? Have people become so personal-media obsessed, they’re changing their focus on what 15 minutes means to them and are they missing the nuances of life, even experiencing childhood and tradition?

What has happened to our ‘television’…? Yes, I mean the real one, the one where they actually deliver ‘the news’ as it comes from real sources, not speculating what the news really is by reading somebody’s Twitter page…

What has happened to our ‘legends’…? The real athletes. The real actors. The real deal… where talent and artistry culminate into a place where 15 minutes is earned, where 15 minutes is ‘a result of good work’ – not because someone gets out of a car, sans undergarments.

As we look at our watches and examine the next 15 minutes and what it will bring, perhaps we can give 15 minutes of our time to the heroes, the people who are making a difference by saving lives, protecting them and bringing the service of education, enlightenment and a little bit of substance. Perhaps then, the following 15 minutes can be a tad more worthwhile, and maybe even inspirational, as we develop our own sense of change in what 15 minutes can incorporate in our daily living.

http://www.100percentrealwords.blogspot.com

© 2010 Queena Verbosity 100% Real Words
Media Monster Communications, Inc.
Stacey Kumagai

http://hubpages.com/profile/mediamonster

http://www.braingasm.com

Back when I was in elementary school, music programs were alive and well in the school system. We didn’t need programs to ‘save the music’ because well, music always existed. And while times have changed and music programs today are suffering not just in the scholastic arena, but professional performance as well, one thing doesn’t change… and that is music can always be alive within you.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you can sing, it doesn’t matter whether or not you can play an instrument or have any music talent at all, music in itself can provide clarity in your life. It was more than an artistic expression, it was just as important for everyone to be a part of as a part of music appreciation/education. And the point being driven home by these school programs was that songs have been written because of something someone was thinking or feeling or experiencing at the time and just had to put it into some sort of therapeutic artistic form. And we should appreciate them.

Well, back in elementary school, we were all required to be part of the school choir. Even the worst singer had to sing, whether they liked it or not. Kids were put in the front, side or back of the group assembly depending on whether they were a soprano, baritone, tenor or alto.

Mrs. Scarvala was our choral instructor. She had a lovely voice and the patience of a saint. To look at her, you would think she was a prim and proper lady who would make us sing church songs. But instead she had us singing everything from “Senor Don Gato Was A Cat” to patriotic tunes and even contemporary songs from chart topping artists of the 60s and 70s.

I thought about her the other day, while having multiple chats through the holiday season with five different friends discussing everything from retina surgery, the economy, the behavioral patterns of sloths, global warming, bathtubs and caulking, politics, See’s chocolates, cheese and disease, and recent deaths of loved ones, including a New Year’s Eve death which happened unexpectedly.

Everyone has questions about something. Everyone is searching for their answers.
Regardless of the conversation, everyone was pondering questions, answers and life. It was then Bob Dylan’s tune “Blowin’ In The Wind” came into my brain. Somehow I was recalling the lyrics… lyrics I hadn’t sung in several decades. Mrs. Scarvala had us sing this Bob Dylan song in our elementary choral program. This made me think about how weird it was to see 7 and 8 year olds singing this song, because back then when we were singing it, we didn’t know what the heck it meant. And while 7 and 8 year olds have questions, lots of questions, we’re not on as mad of a search for answers of why, when, where and how. At least not to the extent we ponder life and apply appropriate songs as being instrumental to how we feel.

So here it is 2010 and I am thinking about a song written in 1962. It just goes to show, how timeless music can be and how its meaning can evolve over time into different things and how certain songs can speak for so many. When I think about how Peter, Paul & Mary, Sam Cooke, Joan Baez, Dolly Parton, Johnny Rivers and many others felt the need to sing this song, too… I realize that the ‘answers’ come to many people at different times. And it doesn’t really matter what the questions are, people are seeking answers to many topics throughout their lives because that’s what it’s all about.

And if there is a day when we are lost for the answer, perhaps we will see it BLOWING IN THE WIND. We just need to be open and aware enough to listen for it.

http://www.100percentrealwords.blogspot.com

© 2010 Queena Verbosity 100% Real Words
Media Monster Communications, Inc.
Stacey Kumagai

http://hubpages.com/profile/mediamonster

http://www.braingasm.com