On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 23:16:22 GMT, "Don White"
wrote:


"Doug Kanter" wrote in message
...


I made a typo. It was 13. To complete the story, I steadfastly refused to
focus on bar mitzvah preparation. A week beforehand, the rabbi said "Look.
This is out of your control. Your parents want this, and they've already
paid for the party and the restaurant". So, in a week, I did the whole
thing. The party was actually pretty good. My friend Gary began flicking
lobster eyeballs at the girls. The whole thing turned into a circus.

I think my parents' mistake was that after Sunday school, they always took
my sister and I antique shopping. That's ridiculous. If you want to get a
kid to do something they don't like, you don't reward them with something
worse, especially on the weekend. My ex-wife has figured this out. She
gets
my son to attend the Unitarian church because afterwards, she offers to
stick around downtown for a hour so he can take advantage of a park that
has
lots of cement structures that are as attractive to skateboarders as a
shipwreck is to a fisherman looking for bottom structure. :-)


Gotta be careful what you do in front of the kids. When mine were very
young (5 and 3), I would take them to Sunday Mass
and sit near the back so we could slip out early just after communion. I was
always in a rush to get to the boat club and our Siren 17 sailboat. To this
day, my older son (now 25) will throw that up at me if I bring up church.


One of the reason why my parents never went to church was that for the
entire summer season, practically every weekend, he'd want to spend it
down at our boat in Atlantic City. Hmmm... Boating vs. Church.....
tough choice....

Dave