Once upon a time

Dear Bloggers,

I digged in my archives and found this story that I wrote in Dutch in March 2008, It was a hard one to translate but it looks like it that i did it again. So sit back and relax here it comes.

Ok, Let me once again start telling about earlier times.

Yes, if you are getting a bit older you start with memorizing your younger days.

I used to think: When I grow up, or is it .... "When I am old?"

As a little boy I did not dream of being a fireman or a pilot.

I dreamed that I would be a cowboy and then it was not so much about the fact that I wore the popper, but more that I liked their roughneck personality and free spirit.

Also the fact that you should lead a nomadic life.

Endless prairies were in my thoughts and in my imagination I crossed them on horseback.

I often drifted off as I was still quite young, my wild dreams were shattered, because you just had to do your best at school and there would not be such a dream.

I therefore present my best side and do the utmost for my children that they will try as much as possible to realize their dreams.

My wife is not stopping me in this case.

Although it is hard to hear sometimes that your child cannot keep up with the rest of the class at certain studyparts, but on the other hand we are also still there to stimulate them and of course to help them.

The things they learn now is what threatens to hit back in a later school stage because some things they have not fully mastered.

Because unfortunately you are getting nowhere nowadays close to the barge without a proper education.

This contrasts with the time I lived during my childhood, when there were many who had only primary school and that was nothing unusual in those days. (Oh yes, that is called Elementary today)

But I had no idea that these people could trick you with their arithmetic skills, writing skills, or their topographical information.

I will not say that there were no stupid people then, of course they existed.

But why should we teach mental arithmetic?

No, need you have a mobile phone or a calculator for this.

And for the more complicated calculations we use a spreadsheet program on the computer.

The topographic information is now in the art of controlling the GPS navigation system.

Not to mention the art of writing.

First thing we have learned is to write complete sentences.

Now they have MSN or SMS language in which you can sometimes find no logic.

If they write: “Please wait” nowadays, they write:”pls w8”.

But I'm just in my forties, then you are according to the young people an older man.

Did I grow old too soon?

Did I become too old to dream?

Soon I probably get an automatically generated letter from somekind of institution that I must report to the club of elderly blokes that hang out with eachother.

In my youth you had respect for those "old men" who gathered every day at to the so-called "lie bench" where they spent many hours.

Overlooking the harbor.

Here they criticized everything that happened in the world.

And that world was much smaller than the world of today.

Ok there was a newspaper (printed on paper and a black and white TV and a radio but that was all technology available to our needs.)

Everything happens so fast nowadays and it is quite difficult sometimes to keep up with everything.

Yes, once the world was still very small but relatively safe for us.

The Old Sailor,