Thought I should write my own version.
Note To Self
Dear Younger Me,
Over the years I've learned a few things that I would like to share with the younger, nine-year-old version of myself.
Your brothers for the most part are putting up with you hanging around, you lucky guy. Their projects and creative ideas inspire you, and soon you will get up the courage to build your own model planes and learn to fly control line. You'll watch your dad build, fly, and crash his own model planes. You'll get to watch your brothers work a radio controlled race car, and you'll wish that you had a turn. This is where you will learn your patience from. You will know that you can't always be "the guy."One day very soon you're going to be in tears about your piano lessons. You will be so frustrated with the crappy music you are learning in piano lessons, you will finally say out loud to your mom, "I want to play the drums." Hey dude, your mom is the bomb. She know's where it's at. She will say, "You can buy your own drums. It's okay with me. Just finish up this one last year of piano."
Your mom and dad are leaving an open door for you. Looking back from where I am now, the fact that they left the door open wide has made it natural and healthy for you to take full responsibility for my actions, and to become a "successful" adult. Nowhere along the way will you feel pushed or cajoled into this or that career, and you will not be "guilted" into doing one thing or another. I want you to realize how freeing it will be to have mom and dad's general confidence and approval, and to not be hampered by critical expectations! Dude, this is a precious gift. It will bode you well.
It took a lot of effort to save up that money from working at the family laundromat business to save up for your first ten-speed bike. Man, you are going to be SO EXCITED on the day your dad brings that bike home! You learned how to save and make things happen.
Yeah. You're learning now that life will be what you make it. Nobody will be dropping anything in your lap.
In your teenage years you will learn how to work with engines, and you'll become a licensed motorcyclist. You'll paint the green Datsun, but eventually you'll get rid of it for scrap when the engine needs rebuilding. Hey idiot! Don't get rid of that Datsun! Don't do it! In forty years that car will be the sweetest thing on wheels! Don't get rid of it! CAN YOU HEAR ME?
You IDIOT. You sold it. Oh how this burns me today...
Over the next few years of your teenage life you'll spend hundreds of hours building models of all types and will become skilled at following written instructions on "how to assemble so and so." Eventually, your first job will be doing just that at Canadian Tire where you will assemble bikes for display and do repairs. WHAT A SWEET FIRST 'REAL' JOB.
In a couple of years dad will take a big step and quit his stable "career" job to start his own business and eventually his own company. You won't realize it at the time, but you are going to experience first hand a hard-working risk-taker/entrepreneur in action.
Your mom will stand by his side every step of the way. You'll eat bologna and pancakes for supper. You'll learn to make your bed and put away your laundry, mow the lawn, how to light a campfire, how to chop wood.
Your dad will take time out of his busy schedule to step you through a small engine rebuild, including replacing an engine block and cleaning breaker points. You should thank him for loving you so much to take the time; I'm sure he could have been working on other things. You were lucky to see your dad share with you what he was passionate about. It will pay off throughout the next four decades because you will be able to appreciate and mimic those same values with your own kids.
Do you realize that the hundreds of hours you spent watching The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family will someday have an effect on the choices you make? You're going to want to be a musician. Whoa. Where did that come from? Oh yeah, I remember now. You will be in LOVE with the idea of being a famous, cool drummer. In high school you're going to follow your siblings into the school band. Then your buddy will invite you to join the Teen Tour Band. Then you'll meet a bunch more music-loving teenagers. Some of them are going to be seriously shit-hot players. They will a big inspiration for you. You'll want to be like them.
Yessir. You love a show. You will love the big parades and field shows. You'll love the excitement and the production and the rehearsals, and the travelling and the practising, etc. You'll love the camaraderie and the cute girls you'll meet doing music. It will be overwhelming to you someday, so much that you will not be able to conceive of any future that doesn't have you doing music somehow.
But be happy and content, my nine-year-old self. You are seeing things happen around you that are monumental and hugely significant. The disappearance of the analog dial phone. The fading from view of the transistor radio. The ubiquitousness of colour television. The invention of the personal computer. You'll get to ride the glorious wave of the introduction and adoption micro-chip and integrated circuit glory. Calculators. Digital cameras. Digital video. CDs come and gone. Internet. Windows 3.1, 95, 98, XP. Smartphones. Smart TVs. Siri. Alexa.
DANG! Young man, you have no idea what you are going to see. There is no way I can make you ready for this! You wouldn't believe me if I told you what type of gadgets and widgets are coming. You are going to ride the biggest wave of technological change ever. It's going to rise up and lift you and you won't even realize you are on the biggest wave of new technology until about twenty or thirty years down the road. By then the wave will already have crashed ashore, sweeping the entire culture along with it.
Welcome to the '70s my young self. Life rocks. It will continue to do so.
Sincerely,
The Older You
