My Life as a Border Collie

I couldn’t have been Michelle Duggar—not enough fingers.

One of the challenges of having four children aged five and under is keeping them corralled in uncontrolled spaces. Home is easy: You close the doors, and know they’re somewhere within the property lines.*

In public, though, it’s a different story. Once the boys were past strollers and leashes, keeping tabs involved counting. A lot of counting. I mentally tapped each of the blond heads hundreds of times every time we ventured out. In the mall: one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. In the campground: one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. In the park: one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four, one-two-three-four. And so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

Our congregation has just started a sermon series on spiritual gifts, those individual enablings the Holy Spirit shares to allow us to contribute well as part of the spiritual body. Yesterday Pastor S encouraged us to complete an online inventory that would help clarify our own spiritual gifts. I’ve taken these inventories before, but I had to laugh when the computer tallied my answers. What gift popped to number one on my list?

Shepherd.

Of course.

*Well, mostly easy. I’ll never forget my horror at answering the doorbell one beautiful spring morning and finding a perfect stranger on the porch holding the hand of three-year-old Boy #3. She had found him wandering along our busy street in his pajamas. And when I say “perfect” stranger, I mean she let me off with a lecture on proper parenting and didn’t turn me in to children’s services for neglecting my toddler. Who knew he had figured out how to open the storm door?

Summer Jobs

My boss and I disagree about how college kids should spend their summer hours.

He's of the opinion that no student should ever work "down." Even if it means taking a pay cut (or no pay), he believes those precious hours should, without exception, contribute to the resume. That means business majors should be willing to work for nothing as marketing interns, and biology majors ought to be helping with the oil spill clean-up.

Boy the Eldest and I, on the other hand, believe summers are for beefing up the bank account with the goal of avoiding student debt. If this means a paid internship that relates to a major, fine. If not, well, the brief intermission will clear the mind.

Either of these views is defensible, and heaven knows the boss is smarter and more educated than I am. In this case, though, I don't think we've parented poorly.

As we watched the storm clouds roll in last night and bumped up the air conditioning to siphon off some of the solidly-humid summer evening, Boy#3 was glad his weekend comes in mid-week and he wasn't patrolling the lake in the four-wheeler.

"Working at the lake makes me realize what a cushy job I had when I worked at the library," he admits.

It's essentially the same thing Boy#2 said a few years ago when he finished a summer of 12-hour shifts spent snapping gaskets into water coolers. It was hellishly hot, even on the 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shifts, and no one cared that he had been in the gifted program. They only cared that he do his job fast and right and not slow up the rest of the line.

In a couple of years, both boys will graduate and the remainder of their working lives are likely to be climate controlled. But working a job solely to have money for the next school year hasn't hurt either of them. They have more respect for persons willing to take on the hot jobs, the dirty jobs, and the jobs that are mind-numbingly boring. Neither takes for granted jobs that have opportunity for advancement, interesting co-workers, and varied responsibilities.

And air conditioning.