Is understanding possible across different generations?
.... Sarah Vowell in her essay entitled Shooting Dad examines her relationship with her father. Vowell tells us that in the beginning she was quite unable to appreciate her parent’s fascination with guns, and she even “[…] found the fact that he was a gunsmith horrifying”. However, as she was growing up she slowly realized that, in fact, she and her dad had a lot in common. Vowell discovered that her fascination with radio was exactly the same as her father’s interest in guns. She says: “My dad and I are the same person. We’re both smart-alecky loners with goofy projects and weird equipment”. In Brad Manning’s essay the relationship between father and son is ‘[…] one determined by athleticism and strength”. The author here recalls his childhood and gives an account of his longing for a subtler type of communication with his dad. Yet, Manning points out that as the time went by he came to understand that the arm wrestling with his father, all the strong hugs and so on, had a deeper meaning. By the end of the essay Manning writes: “[…] what he said to me in that last hug was that he loved me”, and this statement proves that only time and a bit of good will is necessary to understand one another. Finally, David Mas Masumoto in The Family Farm takes a brief look at certain social stereotypes. Again, he takes us back to his school years to show us that the general opinion among his peer...