Welcome to Laundry Week here at OPOD. We will be looking at people doing their wash over the last hundred or so years. The picture is from 1900, and shows a family doing laundry the really old fashioned way . . . using wash tubs and wash boards. When I was growing up in the 60's, we would visit Mexico, and you would see people still doing the wash this way. Near where I lived, some people still had the old outdoor washing machines that had the hand wringers on them, but still they were a step up from this.
OK, I am going to be politically incorrect here, and most likely get the ire up of a lot of visitors, but I think the downfall of our society began when women went into the workforce instead of managing the home. Now, before you get too bristled up, understand why I say this. I think women make excellent if not superior employees, and are smart, efficient, and capable workers. I just think that the most important job in society is rearing up the next generation. Since this is the most important job, we should put our best people on it. When families began to have both parents work, and outsourced the raising of kids to daycare or sitters, an important element of family life was lost, and, well, a lot of the kids started turning out really rotten. The thing that I see happening is that parents try to compensate for the lack of time they have to spend with the kids by spoiling them by buying them anything they want, and having low expectations for them.
I feel that I am very lucky in that when we had our daughter, Mrs. PJM decided to leave the workforce, and manage the home. She was a wonderful mother, we had a happy home, and Mrs. PJM had time to do all types of volunteer work in the community. I, on the other hand, put way to much time in at work. I really wanted to be famous, and had dome some work that started getting a lot of attention. I can remember once even they did a five minute story on the ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings on some work that I had done. They interviewed me, and showed the new technology that I had developed. I was pretty full of myself, and was enjoying all the attention from being on National TV. Well, the next Sunday as we were going to church, Mrs. PJM was dropping our daughter off at the nursery, and I had walked on to get us a seat. As I was walking down the hall, this woman ran up to me and said, "Didn't I see you . . .". Well, I thought she was going to say, "Didn't I see you on the ABC Evening News with Peter Jennings last week?" But, that is not what she said, she said, "Didn't I see you with Mrs. PJM? She is my son's Awana leader, and he loves her so much. When he gets home she is all he talks about. He will remember her for the rest of his life." Well, it was at this point I realized how much more important what my wife was doing than what I was doing. No one ever remembers who did this great thing or that great thing, a few years down the road. But, we all remember someone who helped us, taught us, or were kind to us as children. I think if we all invested more in our own children, and other children around us, we would be happier, our children would grow up better, and Society would return to what it once was.
