I awoke at 2:30 with my arm tingling asleep, and just couldn't get back to sleep. My mind started racing with all of the things I should do. Guilt hits me hard in the middle of the night. I start thinking of all of the people I should write or call, the projects that are incomplete, the deadlines that are looming...It all seems so dark in the middle of the night. So here I sit at the computer trying to finish up my work. I did manage to get the bills paid and some work-related issues taken care of. Now I am at the stage of questioning if I just stay up or try to get an hour of sleep in before the kids get up. The owls are hooting outside, looking for a last minute supper I suppose, and cars are starting to pass as commuters head to work. The windows are open at night now that the air is cooling down. I have had a dread lately of the world as I know it coming to an end. Actually I think it already has, I am just now noticing. I was talking with a friend yesterday about the news story that a middle school is now offering condoms and birth control pills, because their 11 year olds are having sex. That is so beyond me. I still played with dolls when I was 11!! I didn't know what sex was and if I had it would not have been something I wanted to experience. I don't think human children have mutated so much in the last 20-30 years that they now are sexually inclined at age 11. My sons have friends that age, granted who are homeschooled, and none of them seem aware that sex is anything other than a question on their testing sheets. If the topic is brought up their response is, "I don't want to know!" So somewhere our society has gone wrong. I am not blaming the public schools; it is just that there is where the public sends all of their kids, and kids will tell what they think and do. So those kids who don't want to know are now in the position of having to know. But what has happened to those who do know and want to know? Media- movies (even children's movies), tv, commercials, magazines, magazine covers in the check-out line, radio, music, billboards- have forced our children to see and hear what they never should have seen or heard. Children naturally imitate the older people around them. This is what they have seen and heard and now they are imitating- and our society is paying the price.