i wish that i knew what i know now, when i was younger

first off, i would like to say that the title of this post is a line from my number 1 favorite song of all time which is ooh la la by the faces. now i know that's a very bold statement to make, especially for those who love the world of music, but it is.  always has been, ever since the first time i heard it sometime during grade school.  my dad introduced it to me, like he did many other songs and artists that have come with me on this journey called life.  so i have him to thank, for giving me this beautiful song that will forever be loved by my soul. but this post isn't about music, although i could talk about that topic for quite sometime with a great deal of passion. nope, this post is about learning from the youngins of today.  i babysat for one of my good friend from gradeschool's little brothers this entire weekend while their parents were out of town.  i'll be honest, i was a wee bit nervous about taking up the job because while i love kids, i wasn't sure if the boys would even want to be around me and i anticipated it being a lot of me trying to have fun with and talk to them and them kind of just looking at me as if i had three heads or something. luckily, they did not react in this way. they were actually really talkative and taught me a lesson or two during our conversations. one of the boys was telling me about his girlfriend and how he likes her but he doesn't understand some of the things she does. i was immediately speeding down memory lane and reflected on my early "relationships" and how trivial but at the time catastrophic the issues of each one were.  at one point though he mentioned something about how "we'll be talking on the phone and i'll say that i have to do my homework and she'll say yeah me too and then completely spin it around and before ya know it, i'm on the phone for another 20 minutes!"  that one got me. why? because that is EXACTLY what i do all the time. i'll have someone on the phone, they'll say they have to go and i'll agree and before i know it, i'm rambling about something else for another 20 minutes! how frustrating that must be for the one on the other end of the line. it was then that i realized that while i can talk your ear off on the phone, when i think about it, i don't for the most part really enjoy talking on the phone. i mean, there are always those exceptions but generally speaking, no. and maybe i just don't like myself talking on the phone for an extended amount of time because i'm always the one to start tlaking about the most meaningless things. i've really been trying to work on that lately. talking only when i'm in a good conversation or when i have something of worth to say. i've never tried that before so it's definitely been a challenge but a good challenge nonetheless. some of those close to me probably think when i practice this that i'm either upset or in a weird mood or don't want to be tlaking to them but i'm simply trying to find more meaning. silence is a good place to find it if you ask me. silence says a lot more than you think it does. kind of ironic that i'm on basically a rant about silence. see, even when i try and be quiet, i ramble. but what i'm trying to say is that we should listen more to ones that are younger than us, because sometimes their child simplicity is all that we need to find out something about ourselves.