While driving down the 101 here in Los Angeles, I noticed the following sign…

… and it made me think.

NO – Come on! There is no such sign in Los Angeles – – – yet!

But you can find bad surprises in places where they are really surprising – – huh?

Anyways, I want to tell about an old friend of mine. A friend I had hung out with during the last years of high school and most of our time in college, and I thought we really knew each other well.

My moving to the US of A interrupted that friendship somewhat, but meeting each other after both our divorces and a few years of hardly hearing from each other, the spark was there again immediately, and we could talk as if no time had passed when we met on one of my visits to Germany.

But I went back to California, we both got married again and had kids – OK, our wives had. Then it was his time to visit us here with the whole family.

During one of our long talks, he told me that his daughter had become so difficult in school that she was now on ritalin. That blew my mind! I mean, I hear all those bad stories about our school kids being drugged into obedience, but I had never met any such kid. I guess this stuff simply does not enter my reality. But then the only first-degree of separation person to introduce me to Ritalin is my old best buddy from the college days?

I have to face that our realities did develop in different directions. Even though I don’t really think, in his case, it was a replacement for parenting because he was and is a loving father. He must have gotten some really bad information, and that’s the danger of it. If you are not actively looking for the correct information and trust ‘experts, ‘ you might be traveling down the wrong path.

I know how that is!