Meme is a term that is new to me. It’s what people call lists of questions that are passed around in a blog game of tag. It’s never been defined for me, but my high school French dictates that it simply refers to giving the “same” list of questions to different people. If this is wrong – please correct me in comments. I won’t be embarrassed since I’ve pretty much passed the point of no return on that front.
There have been a few that looked fun, but I haven’t tried one yet. I did consider a meme that required one word answers to all the questions… Nuff said – not happening here. And I forgot to keep track of where I saw others that caught my attention. So even though I want to try one out – I don’t actually have one…
My good friend Nancy (who really needs a blog by the way), pointed out that one of my advertisers, Tea, will be launching their own blog this Fall, and they’re looking for “writers interested in conversation about raising little citizens of the world.” As someone who has always loved to travel (one of the highlights of my entire existence was a business trip to Beijing), I really like this idea. I want my children to be citizens of the world. I want them to have interesting cultural experiences. I want to visit the countries of our great great grandparents. I want to take my family to restaurants that offer both traditional and fusion cuisines from around the world. But there is one problem. Actually there are three, and their names are Oliver, George and Eleanor.
Oliver is three years old and George and Eleanor are still a few months away from two. So they’re not really the best candidates for intercontinental travel and fine dining. There were six questions posed to us as writers for subject matter in potential blog contributions. I found that I could not only NOT answer them, I couldn’t really imagine how ANYONE with children small enough to wear Tea designs could possibly contribute to such a discussion.
So I’m creating a new meme. It’s called Citizens of the World. Here are the questions and my answers:
Q: Do you know great places to travel abroad with kids?
A: We have no experience in traveling as a family outside of the U.S. but I believe my husband’s take on our flight to Boston for a wedding was “never again.” I don’t think that Paris will be our next destination.
Q: Do you remember what your child thought the first time he/she tried sushi?
A: My children don’t eat anything that isn’t breaded and/or doesn’t involve cheese. So unless someone can come up with a sushi grilled cheese combo – I just don’t think I can answer this question.
Q: Are you celebrating cultural traditions with your family?
A: Well…unless you count doing take out pizza for dinner every Tuesday (HEY – I’m ¼ Italian), then no.
Q: Do you have a funny or memorable story about an international adventure?
A: YES! Where do I start? Oh wait – you mean with the kids. Yeah – no.
Q: Is your child learning another language?
A: My children can barely speak English at this point. But Oliver can count to five in Spanish thanks to all of the TV watching. Yeah Dora!
Q: What are your favorite children’s books that feature images or stories from around the world?
A: Okay – this is a little more in the realm of possibility for us. An all time favorite book in our house is one from my own childhood bookshelf: Come Over to My House written by Theo LeSieg and illustrated by Richard Erdoes. An American boy visits children all over the world and gets to see where and how they live. It’s adorable, surprisingly inoffensive considering that it was written over 40 years ago and has great illustrations and memorable rhyming text.
The truth is – I’m just being snarky. These questions are perfectly reasonable for people who have to travel frequently as a means of visiting family, people who have one child, people who have really well behaved children that are great at entertaining themselves for long periods of time (it could happen), and people who may not travel but do a lot of cultural things within their cities and really make the effort to teach their children about other countries and cultures.
I would like to be this person – but I’m usually such a mess trying to keep up with our daily routine that I’m lucky if I can get everyone to eat one bite of a vegetable. Exotic foods are out of the question. And like I said – air travel with three toddlers is exhausting (for everyone). Small children tend to prefer routine and my kids are perfect examples of that. Sleeping in a new room in a new place translates either to them sleeping in my bed with me or me sleeping in their beds with them. And neither is particularly restful.
But the idea of this is actually very interesting and also motivating. I do want to expose my children to other cultures and encourage them to be inquisitive and curious about how the rest of the world lives. I want them to travel and have those once in a lifetime experiences that I did. I’m not willing to pack them all up for a once in lifetime trip to Beijing right now (that would definitely be “once in a lifetime” since I don’t think any of us would survive the trip). But I can take them to Chinatown. Hey – we used to take Oliver out for dim sum all the time before he decided that he wouldn’t anything that wasn’t covered in melted cheese. So maybe I do have some stories to tell.
I’m challenging myself on this one. I’m gong to come up with a post to submit. Even if it’s not used, I’ll feel more inspired to try new things with my kids and contribute to their illustrious future as citizens of the world. Everyone is invited to join in – I’d love to see the posts you submit. And also feel free to use my meme. It’s not exactly what I had had in mind – but sometimes you have to get out of those same-old same-old patterns and try something different.
I love all the cool stuff you find in blog world. You ARE a world traveler…a world wide web traveler that is…LOL. I know, that was corny but SO apropos!
We eat a lot of sushi so our kids have tried it but as you can imagine, it’s not a dinner favorite like chicken nuggets!
Hey Kate, It’s Matt.
I would love to comment upon the topic of the post, but having no children, no experience traveling with children, and being simply of the mind that children travel as well as bananas, I will resort to trivial and abbreviated information support:
Meme. As you indicated, it comes from the Greek word for “same”. It got it’s contemporary usage from a Richard Dawkins book where he used it to describe the way in which a cultural trait or series of traits can replicate throughout a population in the manner of a gene according to laws of natural selection.
Internet communities then appropriated the term to mean any web trend or fad that seems to spread by itself like an organism.
It’s rather loosely applied now.
Hi, I live on a message board…
My brother is so smart.
And my bike is rock.
I loved this post. I was addicted to travel – a huge backpacker – before kids and I struggle every day with how to teach them to love the world. They’re kids. They whine and pitch fits and make air plane travel nightmarish.
But, I have to say, we took them to Mexico last Feb (ages 8mos, 2 and 2) and it was a fantastic trip.) I had to really adjust my thinking and put their needs in the center of EVERYTHING, but it was fun. Sushi – not a chance.