Following Sean

I just finished watching Following Sean, a movie about a man who was originally filmed in the '60s as a 4 year old running around alone in Haight Ashbury, bragging about smoking grass and how he could identify a speed freak. The stuff he was saying was crazy, but he was completely adorable and spoke candidly with a child's perspective of a grown up world.

When the film came out, people (understandably) freaked out about this child and his future. He would surely be a druggie! A degenerate! THIS kid and his family were the ruin of America! THIS is what those damn hippies were producing!

So the film maker decided to find him again and filmed him throughout his adulthood.

And he ended up just fine. Smart and kind and hard-working and still kind of adorable. Boringly normal almost.

I'm not saying we should all give our kids pot and let them run around alone (that would be a total waste of pot), but I think it was a cool example of how resilient and malleable kids can be as they grow up. He did all that, lived through it, grew up and out of it and appears to have a very conventional life. There are people with good parents and normal families that grow up to be serial killers or politicians.

You just never really can tell what you're going to get.

You should watch it (I didn't ruin it by telling you what I have. His life and family and everyone's perspective are the interesting part of the footage) and feel better about your parenting abilities, and the chance that your children may end up normal after all.