Sunday, April 3, 2011
Regrets, Re-Do's and Do-Overs
Pick a card, any card. As person with more years under my belt, I have a plethora of regrets to choose from. One of them which has needled me over the years concerns our foreign exchange student Yoko who lived with us in Tennessee. This was the year that Jane Westmoreland May decided she was going to be a foreign exchange student group leader and get all of these students placed in houses and we were going to be one of those houses. We chose one from Japan because Benet spoke Japanese and we got Yoko. Yoko was a spoilt "only" child coming from an affluent family whose parents were older. Because of this, she believed that we were not old enough or experienced enough to be parents. She was rude to us and disobeyed my instructions. I tried very hard to give her a good American experience with an American family. She told all of her friends at school that the only reason we had her was so that we could have a live-in babysitter, she was mean to my children and (horror of horrors) broke our stereo. Interestingly enough, all of the Japanese students that came over that year were little SNOTS and did not last with their families longer than 3 or 4 months. Yoko lasted 8 months with us before I finally broke and said she could no longer stay with us. I had always regretted not being more compassionate and better able to endure her in our home. But... I was really really glad when she left.
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Wow, I never knew that. I guess the only thing I DO know about Yoko at all was that she's in some pictures of ours. If it helps that means I don't remember her being mean, either. :] She really broke our stereo though?! That's messed up. You can't mess with the Sumner's music.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever thought about doing something similar to that again? Having someone else stay with you I mean? Exchange student, foster care, etc?
Having someone else stay with us??? It REALLY depends. Grandchildren spending the night with Nana and Poppop?? Yes, certainly. Otherwise, it would have to be a very strong flaming sword message from God in order for us to have more children in our house again that don't "belong" to us. Each time someone that we know turns up pregnant Benet and I literally do "the Happy Dance" that it is not us. My girlfriend Kimba has legal custody of her 5 year old and 3 year old grandsons - that would kill me. I raised my 8 brothers and sisters before I ever became a mother and am not interested in more. This is why I carefully and adamantly told each of you that if you ever became pregnant out of wedlock that we would urge (PUSH) you to give the child up for adoption because I do not believe in raising someone elses babies. Everyone has a breaking point and that is mine.
ReplyDeleteYoko..... Yikes. that brings up some spooky memories... Actually I don't remember that much about her stay. I do agree that she was a spoiled brat child that thought we owed her the world. Se insisted she know so much more than we did. I think we actually took her on a trip to Chicago, to visit crazy Michelle and Dave Oakey. She would stay up late to talk to her other Japanese friends in the US, open her windows in the middle of winter. but not too much more. Do I put up a blog on my do over... or do I write it on the comment... I don't think it is comment material... I'll ponder this and write this weekend, when KZ and Della are at tech rehersal. By the way, just in case you didn't know. Election day Nov. 2008, a gallon of gasoline was $175.9 in New Jersey.
ReplyDeleteLove you all.
D'oh.... $1.759 per gallon.... ha ha
ReplyDeleteKim and Steve do the exchange student thing a lot, same thing, from japan. they've had only one good one, the most recent one. The other guy stayed in his room the whole time and only came out to eat, the other girl broke dishes and would tell anybody and talk up late all night to home friends. My own roommate of this past semester, she's from macow (just south of hongkong?) and she would always be on the skype to talk to her family (which is great) but it was at 12:30 at night or 6:30 am.....uh....not cool haha. At least oyu didn't have skype back then. Yeah, I dont remember anything about her. just something about being a spoiled punk I guess, but I dont know how I would act if I lived somewhere else for a year. Lib, didn't Meg go to ENgland for a summer?
ReplyDeleteThanks dad, you are the best. Gas right now in Utah is....3.65 ish somewhere around there. grrr. Hey dad, can you sleep at night now knowing that obama is a citizen? hahaha, just playin