Are you ever SHOCKED by how butt-ignorant *SOME* young people are?

[Amerigo Vespucci]

170. I'm a pretty direct person, and that can be a good thing, or a bad thing. Depends...

...but I was having a conversation with his mom and she told me that she "consistently prays that he'll wake up and turn his life around."

I'm not going to bash her praying...I'm a Christian too, and I've prayed for more than a few long shots in my life.

But what I said to her in response was something like "He's not just going to wake up on his own. Something will have to happen to make him WANT to change, and that could be a GOOD thing that happens to him, or a BAD thing, and maybe NOTHING will happen to him at all. Maybe the guy you're looking at right now will be the guy he is when he's fifty."

And she looked sad for a moment and said "I know."

And that's the point where I back off, because I know I've already crossed a line...he's their son, not mine, and his life...and their parenting...is none of my business. But that's the funny thing about friendship. Sometimes we say things we know we shouldn't say because we care about our friends.

I agree with you...this has nothing to do with age. He's the youngest of three brothers, each separated by a year or two. One son is a 100% straight arrow, just lucid and bright and so skilled socially that it is a shocking comparison. The other son is somewhere between the two extremes without the really low "lows" of the youngest son. He's a little more self-absorbed, a little more selfish, but he has a job and meets his responsibilities.

And not having kids or my own (also not wanting to be a parent), I'm the last person on Earth who can claim to have even a minimal understanding, beyond being a bystander, of what it means to be a parent. I can see the pride in the good kids and the pain from the bad ones and all points in between but it is just not hard-wired into my DNA at all to have any interest or desire in being a parent myself. It's one of a few areas in my life where there has never been a dust speck of interest on my part, ever, not for the time takes me to blink my eye.