Being a parent

Now that I am responsible for a tiny, squishy life, I have been thinking of what kind of parent I'm going to be. I know I don't want to be like my parents, who basically kept me locked up in the house until I broke out to do stupid things just because I finally had the opportunity. I don't want to be like jonker's parents, who were the opposite and let jonker do everything, which he did just because he could. So this is going to be new territory. My problem is that I'm not the most mature person, or reasonable person, and I very well might end up advising my kindergartener to do things like hit whoever is being mean to her. Ugh I'm going to have to read some books and stuff on parenting. It doesn't take a village to raise a child; it just takes Google.

One thing I have decided that I definitely won't do is to say, "Well if everyone were to jump off a cliff, would you?" Because let's think about that. If everyone you knew -- your family, your friends, your work colleagues, your schoolmates, your neighbors, the cops in your town, the church folk, your dog/cat/hamster -- zipped past you at full speed towards a cliff, I think you would think twice about standing still and saying, "nope, not gonna run just because the rest of the world is." Your natural reaction, and the most logical reaction, would be to say, "holy shit, why are they all running? Should I run too? Holy shit I'm running too." If there is a reason that the rest of the world is jumping off a cliff, you will most likely want to jump before you can find out what that is.