_johntobias.me

While They Can

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 03:30:00 +0000

A dance recital, a middle school ceremony, and the brief gift of childhood.

I was struggling to find a follow up to my Old Roads essay series. As I said in the last one of those, I wrote them out of my own desire to discover why I felt the way I did and now I understand why.

As there is far more of my life behind me than in front of me, I still find myself looking back more often than forward. While I admit that having grandchildren allows me to do some hopeful forward-looking they alone are not enough to keep me looking ahead.
That being said, grandchildren are what brought me to this particular essay. Not mine, but someone else's.

Yesterday we attended the dance recital for our friends' granddaughters. They are six and four. It was a dance recital, and if you have ever had a child in dance (we had two ourselves) you know exactly what I mean by that. As far as recitals go, this was one of the better ones. The kids wore costumes that were not overly revealing or racy. The music was good (though they had some very strange and jarring edits), and the dances seemed well choreographed. As always the littles were heartwarming to watch, and there are always the one or two littles you feel so bad for because they look like they would rather be anywhere else but on stage.

But this isn't really about that particular recital, or any recital really. It's about the kids who were in it, and the kids who weren't.
Our daughter danced for over a decade, and one of our sons for a couple of years. This was at a different studio than the recital we attended this week but, in my own humble opinion, it was at least as well run, and likely a little better. No offense to either studio intended.

We attended many recitals, performances, and shows over the years. All of them good, from a parent's perspective anyway, and as professional as possible on a small studio's budget. Each one a distinct memory. Each memory like a warm hug from my children. From the moment we sat down in the high school auditorium, it all came flooding back. I had not realized how much I missed the whole production of it all, and I do mean production. The rehearsals, the costumes, the auditorium setup, the refreshments, the hair, the makeup, the chaos, all of it.

I remember our daughter, small and excited, in costume up on the stage following the moves of the older girls or teachers at the sides of the stage. I remember her older, talented, tapping away to the lively songs they always chose. The flowing ballet moves, the bouncy jazz numbers. I remember my son in his jazz and tap numbers, one of the very few boys in each year's production.

The reason I bring all of this up is to contrast it with my experience at this year’s middle school awards/graduation ceremony.
The contrast is astounding. There are so many children, and let’s face it even in eighth grade these are still children, who are in such a hurry to grow up. So many were dressed in ways I cannot imagine letting my children dress for a dance, let alone a school event. Both boys and girls, mind you, I am not just picking on one or the other here. Even my daughter, whom I was talking to on a long trip down from her home in Houghton Lake to our home for a wedding she is in this weekend, commented that she cannot imagine dressing like some of these girls were dressed, even now, at thirty, let alone in middle school or high school.
And it isn't about the clothes or the style either. I know these things change, even in the decade since my sons graduated. I am talking about the attitude, the desire to be twenty while they are still only thirteen.

Too many parents are either uninvolved (and I know many like this) or would rather be friends with their kids than parents. They allow them to act grown up, to be autonomous as if they are adults, all while they are still kids.
I have said it before and I will say it again. If your kids are not unhappy with you pretty much of the time, you probably are not doing something right.
We made the choices for our kids that we thought were best for them, and of course, no one is perfect. We made mistakes, likely a lot of them, surely some we don't even know about.
As has been said many times, there is no manual for raising children. You do the best you can and you hope you don't mess them up too badly along the way. However, the key part of that phrase is raising. You can be friendly with your children, for sure. You do not have to have a contentious relationship with them, but you do have to raise them. You have to do what you think is best for them, not for you, and not so they like you, but so they know how to be a person.

One of those things that needs doing, to raise kids, I strongly believe, is letting them be kids while they can. Adulthood is a long and tough job. There are no summer vacations, no spring break, no do-overs, and certainly no protections from criminal prosecution like minors have. For the most part anyway, I did mention my teenage hacking career, right?

There was a web series back in the late 2000s, The Guild, and in it one of the main characters (who seems to be in his middle teens) runs up a bunch of charges on his parents' credit cards buying presents for a girl. His parents make him get a job to pay back what he spent, working in a restaurant. After spending a couple of weeks at this he says one of those lines that just sticks with you forever: “Working is soul-crushing. I can't believe adults live like this.”

Remember those words when your kids try to get a job at thirteen or fourteen.

We made some choices that were quite unpopular with our kids. I don't really want to get into specifics, but one of the main compass points we had was this: do they need to do this thing now, or can it wait until they are actually an adult? Responsibility was a big one for us. They would have to pay their own way for anything they wanted to do that was, by its nature, adulting. For example, if they wanted to drive, they had to pay for the bump in insurance that their being on our policy created; they had to pay for their own gas, etc.

We would gladly drive them anywhere they needed to go, we were going to every event they had anyway so we took them to every game, recital, concert, or whatever other shenanigans they got up to. We wanted them to be able to play sports, be in choir, go to dances, and just be kids while they were in school rather than working at night to put gas in the car and pay the insurance.

But. They got to be kids. They got to play sports, dance, have fun. They did NOT have to start working at thirteen like I did. Mind you, I chose to, which is an important distinction if my mother is reading this. When you are fifty-eight, looking back at forty-five years of working, those extra five years before the soul-crushing starts look really nice.

Even now, only ten years after our youngest two graduated, they already appreciate having been able to compete, go to counties, go to states, and enjoy being a kid while they could. They have not come around on everything, and maybe they never will. As I said before, we made MANY, MANY mistakes (I just cannot get away from this lazy tool of the weak mind), and there are for sure things that, looking back, I likely would have done at least somewhat differently. But with their best interests at the forefront of our decision-making paradigm, any errors we made were at least from the right place and not from selfishness.

All this really, just to say: let your kids be kids. They grow up fast enough on their own (just ask our son, whose son just turned two; how is that even possible already?). Don’t let it rush by any faster than it has to.

Till next time,

-John

Old Roads: The Road Forward

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 03:30:00 +0000

On Understanding How We Got Here.

So this series finally comes to a close. It's been some journey. It was, for me anyway. I always find the best way to work through things is by writing about them. This time it actually led to an interesting discovery. I'll try not to do that again.

Old Roads: Where You Find Yourself.

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 27 May 2026 03:30:00 +0000

When music finally tells you how you feel.

This most recent bout of maudlin nostalgia, which I have apparently been writing through for over a month now, has been an eye-opening one for me. One could almost apply the Aristotelian concepts of anagnorisis and peripeteia to it. Though, in a most anti-Aristotelian way, my reversal of fortune was for the better, not worse. We can discuss catharsis and hamartia as they pertain to me in another essay.

Old Roads: The Stories That Shape You

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 20 May 2026 03:30:00 +0000

In my earlier essays, I briefly touched on how the stories you experience can stay with you, can become close friends, can feel like home. Whether you experience them through movies, TV shows, books, or by listening to someone speak, they become part of you, sometimes without your even knowing it.

Old Roads: Old Friends, Always Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 13 May 2026 03:30:00 +0000

What makes us go back to our enjoyments, our enthusiasms, if you will, of the past over and over again? Every time I use the word enthusiasms I am reminded of the movie The Untouchables with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, and Robert De Niro. The scene where Al Capone has his capos around a table, making a speech. "A man becomes preeminent, he is expected to have enthusiasms, enthusiasms. What are mine? What draws my admiration? What is that which gives me joy? Baseball."

Old Roads: Returning to the Books That Made Us

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 06 May 2026 03:30:00 +0000

In You've Got Mail Meg Ryan is writing an email (via AOL, speaking of old roads. Though to be fair, the UI looks more like an IM than an email, but it's been decades and I could be wrong.) and she writes "So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around?" It probably should be the other way around, but I know, for myself, that so much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, or saw in a movie.

Old Roads: Paths Though Memory.

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 03:30:00 +0000

Some films are favorites. Others become places we return to. For me, one of those places is the 1977 animated The Hobbit.

Music, Movies, and Memories, Oh my...

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 03:07:00 +0000

Music, who knew? Well, everyone, I suppose. Everyone but me, apparently, because this is one of those I was this many years old when I discovered it moments.

Sometimes the Past is Past. (Or, How to Put Your Behind in the Past)

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 04:30:00 +0000

Sometimes, no matter how great the past was, it's the past and it's gone forever.

Back in the day (WAY back in the day) my high school had what would now laughably be called a computer lab. We had about 25 Atari 8-bit computers (a mix of 400 and 800 models) that we used to learn how to type, budget, write, program, and (though they didn't know it) play games. This isn't about those computers. I still have a working Atari 400 and a working Atari 800 (and countless other older computers) This is about the other thing in the lab.

Coffee, Neurosis, and wit.

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Sat, 06 May 2023 03:30:00 +0000

When I power-watch a TV series that I have already been through any number of times one of two things happens. Either I mostly ignore it, knowing exactly what is going to be said by whom and when, using it as background noise or filler. Or I pay extra attention to it wringing out new meanings, new details, and little in-jokes that I somehow missed the previous times through the show.

Decision Making Paradigm re-evaluated.

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Sun, 10 Oct 2021 03:00:00 +0000

So while I had hoped that I was done writing about friendships it turns out I am not.

Time to re-evaluate my decision-making paradigm...

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 13:44:00 +0000

Rita Mae Brown, in her 1983 book "Sudden Death" wrote, "Unfortunately, Susan didn't remember what Jane Fulton once said, 'Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.'”

When the fall is all there is...

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 28 Apr 2021 03:59:00 +0000

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is from "The Lion in Winter" (1968) (and 2003 for that matter...) when Geoffrey, Richard, and John are in the dungeon waiting on the king to come for them. They have a little back and forth and Richard is going on about how he is going to meet his death. There is an interchange between them that I really like a lot. It goes like this:

Richard: He'll get no satisfaction out of me. He isn't going to see me beg.

Geoffrey: Why you chivalric fool—as if the way one fell down mattered.

Richard: When the fall is all there is, it matters.

The Inner Light

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 04:00:00 +0000

I recently watched the Star Trek The Next Generation episode "The Inner Light" (Season 5 episode 25). This is far from the first time as it is one of my very favorites from the series. This time however it started me thinking and if you know me at all there are only two possible outcomes of my thinking: Very BAD things happen or very PROFOUND things happen. I guess you will need to read on to see which it was this time...

Short Fiction, the Internet, and Everything.

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 16 Dec 2020 05:00:00 +0000

I have been reading what you would call short fiction since I was very young (is there anything that more epitomizes short fiction than a Little Golden Book?) and I was probably 9 or 10 years old when I got my first magazine. I am reasonably sure it was a copy of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine; I still have a couple issues from back then, though not all of the ones I read by any means.

To have lived through some of the heydays of fantasy and sci-fi short fiction and the magazine boom only to then to see it falter, almost disappear completely, and then start to recover was an interesting experience.

Out In The World

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Sat, 04 May 2019 03:30:00 +0000

Every day on my way to work and then back home from work I see people out in the world.

They look like they are having fun, doing things, living lives.

Changing Sentiment

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Sun, 21 Apr 2019 03:30:00 +0000

When I was a kid a bookstore was a magical place. A holy place. Full of action and adventure, science, and imagination.

Every trip to one of my local bookstores was something I looked forward to like a vacation.

Is a writer still a writer if he isn't writing?

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Fri, 08 Feb 2019 04:30:00 +0000

For the last year or so (if I'm honest, nearly two years now) writing has been far more difficult than it should be. By writing, I mean anything that requires putting words in a cunning order. Be that blog posts, letters, novels, or really anything. I managed to complete NaNoWriMo 2017, but it was torture and well, quite poorly written. For NaNoWriMo 2018 I never got past 14k words.

I have always considered myself a writer, not because I had published anything or because I was always writing something, but because I loved writing. Whenever the opportunity presented itself I would write happily away into the night. whether it was instructions on some process or system for work, a letter to someone, a short story, a blog post, or anything the words just poured out (not always good, but easily). This is no longer the case.

NaNoWriMo Once and Again.

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 03:30:00 +0000

Last November I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and was a winner. This was the first time since I was in middle school (7th grade maybe) that I had completed anything I had started writing.

Musical Moods, Songs and Such.

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 03:30:00 +0000

That's the complete list of the songs that are currently on my mood playlist, the songs I turn to daily. These are the songs that mean the most to me right now and I hope you enjoyed them.

The Moods of Songs: I See Fire

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Sat, 08 Jul 2017 03:30:00 +0000

I See Fire

Ed Sheeran

Song 12 of 12

Oh, misty eye of the mountain below

Keep careful watch of my brothers' souls

And should the sky be filled with fire and smoke

Keep watching over Durin's son

The Moods of Songs: Secrets

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Fri, 07 Jul 2017 03:30:00 +0000

Secrets

The Piano Guys

Tiffany Alvord

(Originally by One Republic)

Song 11 of 12

I need another story

Something to get off my chest

My life gets kinda boring

Need something that I can confess

The Moods of Songs: Let Her Go

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 03:30:00 +0000

Let Her Go

Jasmine Thompson

Originally by Passenger

Song 10 of 12

Well you only need the light when it's burning low

Only miss the sun when it starts to snow

Only know you love her when you let her go

The Moods of Songs: All I Want

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Wed, 05 Jul 2017 03:30:00 +0000

All I Want

Kodaline

Song 9 of 12

All I want is nothing more

To hear you knocking at my door

'Cause if I could see your face once more

I could die a happy man I'm sure

The Moods of Songs: Break My Bones

noreply@blogger.com (John Tobias) — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 03:30:00 +0000

Break my Bones

John Taylor

Song 8 of 12

You can say what you like

I'll pay you no mind

Cause I've heard it before

A thousand times