Sharing is Caring

My college degree shows my major to be Parks and Recreation. Yep, I majored in professional game playing - otherwise known as Therapeutic Recreation. It was a different time, it was the 80's, when they told us people were going to be healthy longer, we would be having more free time and work weeks would be getting shorter. I was taught that people wouldn't know what to do with all the free time they were going to get. So what did I study? I learned how to play games and I studied how people interact with each other and I learned about the history of parks and legislation for recreation. I went to Saint Peter State Hospital to see their rehabilitative gardening program. I learned how to play games. I coached special Olympics and interned at an inpatient psychiatric unit in a local hospital. I learned about assessment tools to determine what people did in their free time. I learned about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and studied the Greek philosophy and realized that leisure was the ultimate life luxury. I learned about salon games and how to play them. I watched the movie "You Pack Your Own Chute" twice in two different classes. I know that Bingo is in your blood - and was unable to answer the question on the multiple choice test - What is Bingo - I knew where it was but had no idea what it was....there is something extremely poetic about this. Then I came out and had to learn what lesbians do in their free time. Yep - Bingo, it's in your blood - LOL! I learned how to play New Games - non-competitive games where everyone wins. I learned about personal goals and met the lesbians on the Rugby team - I don't think they played New Games. When I graduated I got to play more games. I learned a lot about team building and groups and why some people are more successful in group situations than others. I learned about power and leadership and the difference between facilitation and ruling. I learned a lot about compromising and honestly believed that compromise created a win-win situation but have since realized that most of the world thinks compromise means lose-lose.

And this idea of compromise brings me to the top dog portion of this blog. While I was eating breakfast this morning I had three dogs breathing on me thinking perhaps they could have a little of my Jimmy Dean lite Breakfast Crossiant. Gromit gave me his prettiest sit, Chewie gave me his most focused eye contact and Emme has to do nothing to convince me that she deserves something. I sat in my chair considering the idea that the best way to play a game is to make sure everyone was involved. I used to say that there was no such thing as cheating just that some people might be playing a different game than I was playing. So the dogs were playing the game to get my breakfast sandwhich - I was playing the game see if I can get Kristin to take a picture of them looking intently at me as thought I were the focus of their lives....As I write this blog I feel like I was cheating. I liked that sandwhich too much, way too much and the dogs didn't get any of it even though they sat while we took their pictures. Do you think they will take away my college degree if they know that I am truly cheating my dogs out of tricks?