Dad and Grad!

Retail stores are pushing Dads and Grads cards and gifts.
Today, my Aimy (hip-hop queen) is graduating from high school. Valley High, as a matter of fact (not Silicon, but San Fernando). During her 18 years of existence, she has seen changes from brick phones to touch phones. She has also lived through a few earthquakes here and there, the Rodney King riot, and now she witnesses Obama telecommute from upstairs of the White House (Presidents live not in Presidential Palace, but in just a “house”,  like in ” house of rising sun”).  Aimy, however, has been living in Hotel California, with her friends, her baby sitter all people of color. Her hip-hop team however is led by a cool white coach.
But the rest of her champion hip-hop team comprise of  brownies. Yet my Aimy is 100% American,
a product of Egg McMuffins, BK’ s French toasts, Taco Bell’s tacos. To her, race is beautiful. Texting is cool.
And the future holds infinite possibilities. I, Dad, just have to make sure that I don’t stand in the way.
Coming here at the age of 19, I already had my preferences all formulated (taste of music, food and clothes e.g. Neil Young, who is that?). Aimy, however, grows up in a world full of acronyms, some of them she and friends invented so as to save money on shorter SMS texts while feeling cohesive at the same time.
I wish her luck, and remind myself that adults (and leaders) are best when they can create a condition, an environment and an ethos that facilitate optimal growth, mistakes allowed and already factored in. I can’t stand those who from the outset, created unworthy goals, then spend the rest of  their lives trying to micro-manage their unrevised assumptions, inadvertently, becoming  “prisoners of their own devices” as the Eagles still sings on.