I alluded to “master planned communities” in my previous post. I alluded to this then because it was exactly while my children and I were driving home from my parents’, exactly during the discussion we were having about our societal “systems”, the crazy lost perspectives many of us are sort of obliged to carry around with us and to function in (prompted by the “outrageous to us” 911 billing story) that we drove past a huge sign on the side of the road…

The sign, not unusual actually, was inviting, topped with a lovely, bright, peaceful, warm sun and it advertised a “master planned community”. Attached to this sign were the words “last phase” and “Act now! Only x lots left!”. The sign also listed some of the things that this master planned community offered. I seem to remember “four lakes” as part of the list. And… this still makes me cringe to think about. And, I cringe for two reasons…

The first reason I cringe is that I felt that absolute profound sigh of “Wouldn’t that be nice.” run through me. The thought of living in a place that was considered and respected and looked after and managed “well” was inviting. And attractive. And drew such a profound sigh of longing from me. And it was exactly this that made me cringe given my second thought… didn’t we used to refer to “planned communites” as villages or towns or cities “before”?

I mean… really. Didn’t we actually used to believe that the planning and constructing and maintenance expertise came with government and city planners and public works? Didn’t we used to believe that we had roads of communication and means of “say” in this? Didn’t we used to believe that wherever we lived was a “planned community”?

When did we stop believing this?

And… really rather scarily… don’t we have a bunch of different names for “masters” of any community. And haven’t we worked so very hard to get away from being subjected to most of these? And… how can we be running towards them while yelling so loudly against them at the same time?

Where on earth are we going and what on earth are we doing?

I write all of this given that “master planned communites” are, it seems to me, a step away from “gated communities” (which we used to call “countries” or, in medieval times, “castles”.) I write that given the huge numbers of “gated” things that are popping up everywhere. I write that given the huge numbers of “the rest of us” that are left on the wrong side (apparently) of the gates.

And I write this wondering whether this “master planned community” could actually own the lakes? Guess it could.

And I write all of this mainly wondering what on earth, where on earth, what kind of earth we are leaving our children.

Is it actually possible to ignore the fact that our current government, our current society is our doing? Some of us certainly seem to be working very hard to pretend that this is true. And… I will admit to being a little nonplussed as to what to do about it. Do we keep throwing good money after bad. (Have I mentioned the bill of $4644 and some cents?) Do we start “fresh”? Can we start “fresh” when it means buying into concepts like “master planned” when we know how these can turn? And… this isn’t as abstract as it might appear…

My son’s public high school implemented “uniforms” last year. I actually voted for this despite my son’s dismay at the time of the vote the year before. And.. since this was implemented, I have been trying to remember the why of my voting this way.

I thought I understood when at the beginning of the school year last year, I saw my son and his friends. Notably they are all great kids and they are all teenagers. They are at various stages of that “I’ll get used to this changing body someday” phase and their postures are not always “confident” or “bright” or “enthusiastic” or any of the things that we — adults — have gotten used to reading in and through body language. And their personal choices of dress can be rather extreme. So… when I saw the group of them at the beginning of last year school year, I kind of let out a sigh of relief. But then I realized I was sighing because uniforms are amazing equalizers when some teachers aren’t. (Yikes! to that realization.)

But… the uniforms — a choice of clothing provided by a specific supplier — weren’t easily accessible and some prices (for the white t-shirts for instance) could have been bettered. The parents protested. The school relented and this year, we the parents were not obliged to use this particular supplier. And we were given rough guidelines of what the clothes could and couldn’t be.

So… for my son this was great. He, notably, likes to dress well. So — guidelines studied on the internet — we went shopping. And he bought his stuff. And he was happy. And I was happy. And on the first day of school he was sent to the director’s office during second period because this teacher deemed that the colour of blue shirt my son was wearing was not the right colour of blue. The director agreed, blasted my son and told him on top of that the blue pants he was wearing were also not acceptable given the lined texture to the fabic. I drove to school with a change of clothes and so started his school year.

Since then he has been criticized for the dark grey wool pants he wears.

And since then he has back to wearing many of the “same supplier” supplied stuff.

And since that rather than leaving the house with the confident, bright, posture of his first day, he leaves the house “resigned”.

And since then I’ve seen — when I’ve dropped him off or picked him up — how large the discretion, how not controllable this not clear uniform code has been taken by the students.

So… yesterday after our “911” and “master planned community” and “what will your generation do?” discussion he said “That’s it. I’m wearing my blue shirt to school again.” and we spoke about why he would do this.

I guess ultimately it is to not feel the need to feel “resigned”. And I can’t say that I disagree with this in any way shape or form. But I will add that I hope between now the time my school or my son next calls about this, I will have figured which problem exactly it is that we are discussing. I do know that when I utter things like “Our master planning seems to have gone awry.” I get the strangest looks :o)