Reruns

On Tuesdays, my oldest son gets out of school before lunchtime. We have a pretty good routine: we either pick up lunch or I make it, and then we sit and watch the "I Love Lucy" reruns for an hour on TV. We both enjoy the brilliant comedy antics of Lucille Ball. I love the fact that my son, who is 13, can laugh at the same silly situations that made me laugh at his age some 32 years ago.

One of the reasons I like my kids to watch classic reruns like "I Love Lucy" and "The Andy Griffith Show" is that they can see that times may change, but people don't. We all laugh and cry. We all experience joys and heartaches. I also want them to see a time when moral standards played a major role in people's lives. Good and evil did matter; and it still does today even if others aren't willing to play by the rules.

I want them also to see that we can laugh at life. We don't need to use bad words to make ourselves funny, and we don't need to take advantage of others in order to make ourselves look good.

We cannot and should not live in the past; but we can learn from it. I'm glad I'm taking the time to share what was valuable from my past with my kids.