Happy Christmas!

I found these Christmas photos from long past long ago and I’m thinking of the Christmases gone by. Many were merry. Some were lonely. A few were sad and some passed by quietly without leaving any trace.

Dottie almost hidden by her much-loved Ben.

Almost all my Christmases were spent with family but it would be wrong to say they were all happy occasions. Please don’t misunderstand. I’m not writing this to dampen your festive mood. I’m only saying that what we hope would be happy events don’t always turn out the way we want them. Minor calamities can happen—for instance at a party—someone accidentally pours red wine on the expensive dress you’ve borrowed from your sister-in-law. Or your best friend decides to have a temper tantrum and slights you by refusing to attend your party. Or a pretty young thing falls sick (for some obscure reason) and your husband or boyfriend drives her home. That’s not a problem unless the ten minute drive takes an hour or two!

Dottie, still an only child, at two years and ten months.

Sometimes real catastrophes occur—like the devastating Christmas tsunami off Sumatra in 2004 or the tropical storm, Greg, which swept away whole villages in Keningau in 1996.

I have had my share of personal disasters. My only regret is that I was not able to shield my kids from my feeling of despair and hopelessness; that I didn’t try hard enough to remain strong and kick self-pity out the door. Kids do not deserve gloomy Christmases. They’ll have their own share of heartache and headache and other miseries when they’re older and I feel we should do whatever we can to keep those unhappy situations till ‘later’. 

Unwrapping a gift from Santa!

So if you are a mother (or father) of young children, put on your cheerful faces and create happy moments for your kids so they’ll have beautiful memories to treasure and (later) to share with their own children.

A merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you all!

Sex Education for Kids

Finally, school kids are going to learn about sex. I had been ‘advocating’ sex education in school since the 1990s. I believed kids needed to know something about sex if they were going to be told about sex predators and how to keep away from potentially dangerous situations. I believed that education could reduce sex crimes committed on children and might also prevent the loss of some young lives.

However, people were not receptive to the idea. One shocked man even said: What? Teach students in the classroom what’s done behind locked doors?

How stupid could one get?

I thought kids should have a fair idea of the subject. They should know that babies don’t just arrive from nowhere in the middle of the night. (Better they learn the correct information from a responsible adult than pick weird stuff from other sources, don’t you think?) They should know the proper names for body parts. It is imperative they learnt what is accepted touching and what is immoral behaviour. They should learn how to avoid suspicious people and know who to go to for help.

For various reasons, many parents don’t teach their kids the proper words for sex organs but instead give them non-sexual names. People outside the family could be forgiven if they wondered why all the fuss when little Johnny complained some fellow touched his golf set—you know, two balls, a bag and a stick. With a proper vocabulary, no extra explanation is needed.

That reminds me of the Dusun parents of the good old days. They were never squeamish about teaching their kids names of body parts. In my parents’ house, balabak and tontolou (testis), tolih (penis) and totoh (vagina) were everyday words like eye or grass. In fact, I had always thought that the common boy’s name ‘Ontolu’ came from ‘tontolu’ the Dusun word for egg. And you can guess the origin of ‘Otoh’, the common pet name for girls! Incidentally, these were never derogatory terms. The Dusuns didn’t have four-letter words—those had to be borrowed from other cultures by the ‘modern’ Dusun.

Now let’s skip back to our main subject…

The problem is/was when we talk about teaching students sex education, people get hot under the collar because they assume that you’re teaching kids how to make babies, coital positions included!

Narrow-minded nincompoops.

Had these people listened to our voices a dozen years ago maybe, just maybe, many innocent kids could have been saved from sex predators.

Now it is okay to teach sex education in schools. It took the rising number of teenage pregnancies and countless newborns left in toilets and abandoned in dumpsters to make Malaysia think that sex education should be in the curriculum after all.

 I have a feeling that if trashing babies has not become a problem, there’d be no sex education for our young. What do you think?

Pictures from Google Images

Television

TELEVISION

Roald Dahl

The most important thing we've learned,

So far as children are concerned,

Is never, NEVER, NEVER let

Them near your television set --

Or better still, just don't install

The idiotic thing at all.

In almost every house we've been,

We've watched them gaping at the screen.

They loll and slop and lounge about

And stare until their eyes pop out.

(Last week, in someone's place we saw

A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)

They sit and stare and stare and sit

Until they're hypnotised by it.

Until they're absolutely drunk

With all that shocking, ghastly junk.

Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,

They don't climb out the window sill,

They never fight or kick or punch,

They leave you free to cook the lunch

And wash the dishes in the sink --

But did you ever stop to think --

To wonder just exactly what

This does to your beloved tot?

IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!

IT KILL THE IMAGINATION DEAD!

IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!

IT MAKES THE CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND

HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND

A FANTASY, A FAIRY LAND!

HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!

HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE

HE CANNOT THINK -- HE ONLY SEES!

'All right!' you'll cry. 'All right!' you'll say,

'But if we take the set away,

What shall we do to entertain

Our darling children? Please explain!'

We answer this by asking you,

'What used the darling ones to do?

How used they keep themselves contented

Before this monster was invented?'

Have you forgotten? Don't you know?

We'll say it very loud and slow:

THEY ... USED ... TO ... READ! They'd READ and READ

And READ and READ, and then proceed

to READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!

One half their lives was reading books!

The nursery shelves held books galore!

Books cluttered up the nursery floor!

And in the bedroom, by the bed

More books were waiting to be read!

Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales

Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales

And treasure isles, and distant shores

Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,

And pirates wearing purple pants,

And sailing ships and elephants,

And cannibals crouching 'round the pot

Stirring away at something hot.

(It smells so good, what can it be?

Good gracious, it's Penelope.)

The younger ones had Beatrix Potter

With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,

And squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland

And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and -

Just How The Camel Got His Hump,

And How The Monkey Lost His Rump,

And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,

There's Mr. Rat and Mr Mole -

Oh, books, what books they used to know,

Those children living long ago!

So please, oh please, we beg, we pray

Go throw your TV set away,

And in its place you can install

A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

Then fill the shelves with lots of books,

Ignoring all the dirty looks,

The screams and yells, the bites and kicks

And children hitting you with sticks -

Fear not, because we promise you

That, in about a week or two

Of having nothing else to do

They'll now begin to feel the need

Of having something to read.

And once they start -- oh boy, oh boy!

You watch the slowly growing joy

That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen

They'd wonder what they'd ever seen

In that ridiculous machine,

That nauseating, foul, unclean,

Repulsive television screen!

And later, each and every kid

Will love you more for what you did.