Six Gallons of Gin

This has nothing to do with the kids - not yet anyway. I was captivated by a review about a new book describing life in London during the mid-eighteenth century. It got my attention right away by opening with a line about Londoners brazenly urinating in the streets in the 1760's which got me thinking about modern day Hyderabad. Towards the end it mentioned that people consumed an average of six gallons of gin a year. That felt like a lot.

Later I pulled up the wikipedia entry on alcohol consumption per capita by country and it was illuminating. This is based on a WHO study. The unit of measure is equivalent liters of pure ethyl alcohol (so it would take 10 bottles of a liter each of 10% alcohol to make one equivalent liter of ethyl alcohol).Moldova is in first place. I had to google Moldova. It's a tiny land-locked country south of Ukraine. It's the poorest country in Europe. They drink more than double of what Americans do. Next, except for Andorra (#7), you've got to go to the 13th place to find the first non-eastern-European country on the list. Guess who that is? South Korea. Then you have to go to the twenty seventh place to find the next non-European nation. Nigeria. Canada comes in at 48, right after Rwanda. The US is at 57. Even the Nepalese drink more than us. At the bottom of the list are Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

Moldovans drink over 18 liters of pure alcohol. That's over 240 of our 750 ml sized wine bottles of 10% alcohol drunk by every adult over 15 years of age in a year. At #57, we Americans would have to consume over 125 of those bottles of wine. I don't consider myself a slouch, but someone's pulling most of my weight. And the six gallons of gin? That's about 13 liters of pure alcohol - about equal to the total consumption of all types of spirits per capita in the United Kingdom today. Here's another morbid statistic - 2.5 million deaths each year are related to drinking alcohol. Almost seven thousand people are going to die between now and tomorrow this time due to alcohol. That's more that twice the number of people killed on 9/11 - every day.

Girls

This evening I went to a talk at Vivian's school about girls and their friendships and relationships and bullying and all that stuff. Jo wanted to go. Because we hadn't signed up for childcare, only one of us could. I told her that she probably intuitively knew most of this stuff while it was all foreign to me. So I got to go. One of six dads in a sea of mothers.

Growing up with a brother as my only sibling and attending an all boy's school and then an almost all male engineering college in the middle of a literal desert hasn't prepared me well to raise a girl. My mother was a doctor in a profession and a world dominated by men and she taught me to think that any one can do anything, and in the process minimized the differences between genders. It was much much later when I read "Men are from Mars..." that I came to realize that there is a whole school of thought that men and women are psychologically different. I couldn't read past the introduction because the author ran out of steam and kept repeating himself (or herself - sorry - I don't remember). So my relationships, including that with my lovely wife are based on an almost complete ignorance of the female mind. All I've learned over the last half a century is that the female mind works differently from mine and that it's a lot more complex.

Today I learned that girls form intense relationships with each other. I imagine like boys do with our stuff. They are scared of being isolated. They can be mean. I knew that. They don't want me to judge their friends or friendships. I'll have to work hard at this because isn't that what we've learned by putting in our time - to be able to make correct snap judgements. I learned that I shouldn't trivialize her problems by saying stupid and insensitive things. That I can't be hypersensitive and I need to give her the space to have her own feelings and to develop her own tools and skills needed to make and keep friends. And I learned the obvious things. Listen and ask, don't tell. Teach and show the golden rule. Communicate often. Be open.

Long road ahead.

Cheez Its

At pre-school Vivian was well indoctrinated about the Christian faith. At home, she would occasionally spontaneously burst forth in speech and song about how God and Jesus loved her.

Then she went to secular pre-school in India - where one of her teachers was muslim and the school celebrated religious holidays of many stripes. So did my friends. Seeing more religion was revealing. And then she has had more than a year at Magellan which is also secular.

Evan - now in his second year at that same pre-school, has given us no indication at all about how his religious education is progressing. He never mentions God or praying or any of the things Vivian did - to the point where we've asked him if he's going to chapel and if he listens to what Pastor Amy says. So it was surprising the other day when we were chatting at the dinner table and conversation turned to what was in your heart. I mentioned blood. Evan said that Grandpa and God were in his heart. So touching.

"God isn't real" said my six year old, though she said it very sweetly.
"Jesus is in my heart" said Evan But his pronunciation is atrocious.
"You have Cheez Its in your heart?" asked Vivian innocently. I too had thought that Evan had said "Cheez Its" and wondered why.

It is interesting to see kids muddle through this mess. I wonder how it will all turn out.

Happy Birthday Quinn

Quinn is one of my favorite people. He always greets me with a warm handshake and a smile. He acts very grown up and then launches himself at me for a hug. He isn't worried about attempting the worst jokes and his delivery usually carries off even the poor ones.

He turned 14 last week and Vivian photo-bombed his birthday picture with his proud parents.