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Here at Fernglade Farm we’re not shy about blatantly ripping off a current (or even a past) pop culture reference in order to get a snappy sounding blog title! And this week’s blog title was almost handed to me on Sunday by Sir Scruffy – the scruffy terrier – who has won the most recent round of the ongoing Bone Wars saga which is being waged amongst the fluffy collective (that description refers to the rest of the dog pack).

The face in the photo below says it all, as Sir Scruffy makes no bones (apologies for the bad pun) about hiding the most recent bone acquisition:

Sir Scruffy is a wise canine because after having enjoyed the large beef joint bone for a few quiet hours on a sunny winters afternoon, he came to the conclusion that it would be sensible if the other members of the fluffy collective were deprived of that same bone. Obviously he was only considering the interests of maintaining a harmonious pack. And clearly the best tool at Sir Scruffy’s disposal was burying the bone somewhere that the other dogs would not find it. And when it comes to such activities, Sir Scruffy is the best in the business, as he can hide bones for weeks on end where the other dogs will not be able to find them. Sir Scruffy is using his superior “Secret Fluffy Mind Powers” to achieve this bone disappearing act, although a more pragmatic person would suggest that he is just really good at burying bones where the other dogs are too stupid to find them.

Whatever may be the case, Sir Scruffy has set hard limits on the other dogs activities in the ongoing Bone Wars, for his own reasons, which may be an altruistic choice, but in all honesty may also involve a certain degree of self-interest. In observing those bone actions, I started thinking about the issue of limits because when I was an impressionable teenager, adults used to tell me all the time that the sky was the limit, and I could achieve whatever I desired, so long as I put the effort into that objective. They usually then went on to say that the times were now so different for me than they had it and how lucky was I to be able to do whatever I wanted. That sounded pretty cool to me. I mean who doesn’t want lots of stuff or to be an astronaut?

Unfortunately for those adults, I was mildly apathetic, whilst also still being a good student, but I never really had much in the way of great expectations or desires. And the idea of having no limits seemed mildly disconcerting and a bit disorienting to me. I mean who seriously wants to grow up to be an astronaut when that means being exposed to hard radiation and possible death in a high vacuum environment? This concept held absolutely no appeal to me, and here it is worthwhile mentioning that as a very young child my older sisters took me to watch the sci-fi horror film “Alien” at the theatre. Unfortunately for me, it wasn’t cool for them to hang with their younger brother so they ditched me, and there I sat alone and apart from my older sisters watching this horrific film about unpleasant encounters in deep space with clearly superior alien beings – who had a specific agenda – which didn’t involve humans. There was no way I wanted any part of that space business. No way! It seemed absolutely horrible stuff and those aliens appeared to me to make very unpleasant company.

Anyway, despite the rhetoric from those adults, who were clearly trying to fool me with their talk of the sky being the limit (thankfully for me that same sky set a solid upper limit on the number of astronauts positions required!), I didn’t notice that any of those same adults were reaching for the stars themselves. I didn't see many adults aiming to become an astronaut so that they could take on really nasty and very harmful aliens. I mean, did you the reader see anyone doing that? Maybe it was the socio-economic strata I grew up in, but then again maybe not. All I know is that I certainly did not see any adults at all aiming to study and train hard enough so that they could achieve a career as an astronaut so that they could get quickly killed by a seriously bad assed alien?

So one day, the obvious conclusion popped into my head whilst I was yet a young teenager: Adults were capable of lying to children.Who would have thought that this was possible?

Last week as I walked through an obscure back lane in Melbourne, as I have done so for many years, I thought about that turning point in my life where I discovered the shocking realisation that adults lie to children about not only small things, but also the very big things. And that thought popped into my head because I passed by a choice bit of entertaining and yet confronting street art which always turns my mind towards considering such topics.

But the unspoken question always remains: Why are limits considered to be bad?

For the rest of the blog entry click on: http://ferngladefarm.blogspot.com.au/