And my dad thought I wasn't listening ...

Do you fall asleep on the sofa? While I was nodding in and out Monday night Hubby was flipping through the late-night news-channel shows … the ones that boast intelligent debate but really are just people yelling and promoting books.

I bring you this because what I heard, while awake, got my attention. A man (who has some kind of book out of course) was pointing out that every trend has a backlash of sorts. His assertion, through my sleepy haze, seemed to be that Americans are about to overdose on technology, that soon the truly high fashion will be to have less technology. So gang, we here at Table Is Set are ahead of the trend! And I found another level of appreciation for this comic.

As I dozed off with his words and my hopes swimming through my head something else muddied the waters. A Pew Research Center poll and UCLA’s annual freshmen survey were reported online last week. From Tuesday’s paper:

The Dash for Cash
Wealth and fame are top goals for today’s 18- to 25-year-olds.
Most Important Goals in Life?
get rich … 81 percent
be famous … 51 percent
help needy … 30 percent
be community leader … 22 percent

Percentage of College Freshmen Considering Being Financially Well-off Very Important
1966 … 42
1976 … 50
1986 … 71
1996 … 72
2006 … 73

And in the soup of thoughts I’ve been straining I found a frightening broken record of my dad’s voice.

Dad’s “Actions speak louder than words” speech: I’m often seen slugging coffee and telling others to eat breakfast. Usually my breakfast is picking at a bagel or Pop Tart … no fruit … no yogurt … none of the stuff I make them eat … while assembling lunches. Why do I expect it to be easy for them to build a balanced breakfast? My actions are louder than my words. Experts say that when we model healthy habits at mealtime our kids will have healthy habits.
Dad’s “me first and to-hell with the next guy” speech: It’s not unheard of for the 7-year-old take the biggest piece of chicken he can find at dinner and leave part of it uneaten. “Only take what you’re going to eat,” we say regularly. It’s one of the little things that would stack up on my dad and lead to this speech. There are many more people who will drive you off the road to get to where they’re going than there are who will stop to help you after the crash. Which kind of person do I want to be? Which kind of person do I want my kids to be? They learn values in the daily things, not necessarily in the occasional grand gesture. Hey, kiddo, think of others even in the little things you do, maybe leave that biggest piece of chicken for Daddy and not be wasteful.
Dad’s “It’s not what you say, but how you say it” speech: He would always talk about tone-of-voice. I catch myself in this with my kids. Not just their tone, but mine, too. There are lots of ways to say the same thing and each way imparts its own underlying message. For instance, when in frustration and fatigue I say: “Glue your butt to that chair and eat the meal,” the gears shift from restless to hyper because somebody said “butt.” (If you have boys you know this is one of the most hilarious of English words.) If I say: “Stay in the chair and tell me about your day between bites,” I get totally different results. The only way to learn the impact of these different messages is to practice making conversation; to learn to soak up the bulk of communication, which is in body language, not words. When you see your sister stop her fork halfway to her face you know you’ve said something surprising, or hurtful, or thought-provoking or funny. Stop yourself, gauge the reaction, then continue in a way that considers how what you said made her FeeL.

So the mud settled to the bottom of my cerebral sea. I sailed on the clear water and soon found myself here, on the shores of a land where numbers don’t lie; in a country where fewer than one third of our children have regular family meals; combing the sands and finding surveys that tell us our inaction has been louder than our words … our young people put people behind everything else. It seems keypads and screens have made people less real. And so I offer up this soon-to-be-trendy antidote: Spend some time with people … turn off the technology. We have the power to change our world one meal at a time.