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How to be Stupid!

5/27/2019

We all know stupid people, have seen stupid acts and done stupid things ourselves. However, some people have a knack for stupid. Maybe there is a reason, which I will get to later. Pointing out some of these stupidities to those we love or mentor may be helpful to their success. We all remember our parents saying, “If (Joe or Judy) jumped off a bridge, would you?” That was how they taught us NOT to be stupid. But it lacked panache. Teaching the right things to do or say doesn’t have the visual impacts or humor of ‘how to be stupid’. Let’s show them how to be stupid and hope our children ignore us as they are want to do.

The Trifecta of ‘How to Be Stupid’

The first step in really being stupid is to quit school before graduation or before you have a real skill. It’s not just what you won’t learn, it’s what it says about you, and the interpretations of others have about you - that you’re a quitter or think you’re too smart for school. You may get a job that earns well, but the odds are highly against it.
Speaking of jobs, not getting one is beyond stupid. If you are of sound body and mind, which is doubtful if you quit school, then you can still find a job. Sure, it may not come with a car and an expense account, but not only will you make some money, but you will also have pride and self-worth. Doing a job well with pride, no matter what it is, brings you respect. If you are the best burger-flipper in town, you will be more respected than a lousy insurance agent.
If you really want to be stupid, give birth to or father a baby in your teens. So many aspects of this will go against you. First of all, if you are a girl, the father may disappear or be irresponsible. This possibility shouldn’t be a surprise. Secondly, the freedom you have been waiting for all your young life will be gone! Thirdly, you are highly apt to be poor, really poor, especially if you quit school and don’t have a job. The statistics are overwhelming.

So what are the best ways to avoid falling into poverty?

Given the ‘trifecta of stupidity’ scenario above, the Brookings Institution has spent a great deal of effort studying this issue. Brookings whittled down a lot of analysis into three simple rules. You can avoid poverty by:

1. Graduating from high school.

2. Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.

3. Having a full-time job.

If you do all those three things, your chance of falling into poverty is just 2 percent. Meanwhile, you’ll have a 74 percent chance of being in the middle class. These rules apply to all races and ethnic groups. Breaking these rules is becoming more commonplace, unfortunately, for all racial groups. By contrast, young adults who violated all three norms - dropped out, got married before 21 and had children out of wedlock and didn’t have a full-time job - had a 76 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 7 percent chance of winding up in the middle class.

Not Thinking of the Possibilities/Consequences

I admit to not being a big fan of tattoos, just a personal opinion. I think we all look better without them, au naturel. But I understand the appeal of some to be individualistic - we have that right. The name of someone you love or have loved forever can be endearing. A small butterfly, flower, initials or other adornment is often sweet and harmless. But getting a controversial tattoo without thinking ahead is a giant leap towards being stupid.

Let’s say you want to be a real estate agent, a hand-sized tattoo of the devil on your neck may not be a good idea. If you are going to join the military, they frown on tattoos of swastikas or skulls on your forehead. I once saw a young girl with a tattoo about five inches tall of Mr. Peanut on her calf. She must have really liked peanuts! Another girl prominently displayed Tweety Bird. Tweety is cute, but what are you saying about yourself? Weddings, where the bride has a skeleton tattoo on her back shoulder above her wedding dress, do have their place in some weddings. The tattoo I saw of Patrick Swayze as half-man, half-horse, in a pink and purple motif, was a particular favorite of mind. Centaurs may have been all the rage when this lady chose her tattoo. Maybe it wasn’t stupid….then! Again, if you have an ugly, rated X, Taco Bell, scary, or cartoon tattoo, and don’t care how it may impact your future life or possible changing values, then go for it.

I live in Missouri, where they have helmet laws for motorcycles. Whenever I go into Illinois, where there is no helmet law, I rarely a helmet on anyone. Now I’m not big on the government telling us what we can do to ourselves, so I prefer not having a helmet law. But if stupid had a trophy, it would be biker’s noggin cracked open like an egg. Now I understand it is cool not to wear a helmet, both literally and figuratively. But it’s not cool to drool in a wheelchair in a nursing home, or die! Oh, and for you bikers out there who don’t like helmets while riding, I don’t actually live in Missouri. I live in Australia!

Some things become more stupid as you age. If teenage boys are “burning rubber” on their cars, it’s kind of stupid, but it is also fun (if done safely in non-populated areas). It is what we do growing up. Now if you’re 40 or 50 and you’re burning rubber, that’s stupid. You just wasted 5000 miles of wear on those tires. Grow up!

Smoking is stupid if you’ve never smoked before! Smokers smoke because they are hooked and enjoy it. If you’ve never smoked, you are not hooked. It is expensive and dangerous to your health, so why set yourself up to be slaves to tobacco? I see more young teen girls smoke than teen boys. One of the few examples on the plus side for girls being more stupid than boys.

Now it’s safe to say that boys are stupider than girls in general. But when girls do stupid things, it can be even more dangerous. Girls drinking at parties is even stupider than boys drinking at parties, if possible. Dressing to be attractive is good. Dressing in a slutty or suggestive fashion is pretty stupid for a girl to do. And don’t twerk. Why? Because guys are so much stupider! They think you are flashing a green-light for their pleasure. And boys do very stupid things for pleasure! Girls are stupid if they don’t know this.

Other Ways to be Stupid

Not checking for toilet paper before you go into a stall
Thinking your kids won’t be stupid
Not keeping your word
Sending money for any reason to Nigeria
Resisting arrest, even if you are innocent
Not listening to those that know what they are talking about
Letting kids have free, unsupervised access to the Internet
Not saving a percentage of your income
Texting on a smartphone while driving
Not paying off a credit card each month
Buying things you don’t need with money you don’t have.
Doing X-game activities when you’re not X-game talented

Some things are more stupid than others!

I know I guy who, when he was a teenager, was drinking with a few friends. They got drunk and decided to have a bar-b-que. The trouble was they had no meat and likely spent their money on beer, etc. They decided to drive drunk to the country and find a cow they could butcher. Amazingly, without killing themselves or someone else on the way, they found a lonesome cow in a field. One of these yahoos climbed over the fence, knife in hand, to kill this poor animal. He stalked slowly and unsteadily towards this cow and just as he reached this innocent bovine, the hungry drunk thrust the knife into its hind quarter! With the reflexes of a Kung Fu artist, the cow kicked knife-wielding predator in a place where the pain was so severe, he threw up and became instantly sober! No bar-be-que that night.

No, this was not me! but I have done stupid things like everyone. I have driven while drinking, stood on a porch swing only to fall hard on concrete, and I once played “You Light Up My Life” on a Juke Box.

Can you fix stupid?

Some say you can’t fix stupid. But maybe you can. Stupid has a recipe. One part show-off, two parts needing attention, two parts lacking a mentor, one part of lacking realism, one part of gullibility, one part over-confidence, two parts arrogance, all exacerbated by a dash of liquor, a pint of anger, or a shot of revenge. The young man who stabbed the cow would not have done so without this recipe. He did not have a present father, who abandoned him, nor a present mother, whose absence was created by a need to work endless hours to feed her many children. His act of stupidity was preventable.

Let’s change the recipe with proper attention, mentoring, education, acceptance, and supervision. Let’s face it. Much of stupidity is preventable. It will never be wiped out, and each of us will have our share. But children and young adults taught a proper recipe for living a good life will minimize stupid acts, becoming more successful and perhaps saving their lives! That proper recipe involves some critical ingredients, like people who care enough to sacrifice for them. Usually and ideally, those people are an intelligent and caring mother and father working together.

Summary

Stupidity will always be with us! However, individual acts of stupidity are very preventable. They are preventable with good parents and good mentors teaching young people the proper recipe to improve their chances for success using reasoning, values, and foresight. Very few of us are adequately self-taught in these areas. The pressures of society, especially uncivil society, are too significant to overcome alone.

#powerofdadhood

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Learning to be Grateful

5/20/2019

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I don’t think most of us realize just how fortunate we are. Certainly, this is true in the big picture. Realizing our fortunes would cause us to be more grateful, and I find that grateful people are happy people. However, to become more grateful takes a bit of reflection and less self-absorption. After all, we quickly adjust to our conveniences.

Is there anyone reading this that hasn’t slept in a warm bed, been awaken by the alarm on your smart-phone - which has almost any fact, type of entertainment, or directions to anywhere? You have refrigerated food that can be cooked or warmed in no time in your microwave. You may head off to work in your car or find public transportation available. Surprisingly, everything works. Highways, utilities, law enforcement, you name it, have occasional issues but overwhelmingly are dependable.
We live longer and healthier than at any time in history. My infant sister died of an esophageal issue in 1953, but my neighbor’s son thrives today, having had the same issue as a baby in 1980. Various diseases have vaccines. Infant and toddler deaths used to be common, now they are a tragic but comparative rarity, especially in the US. We have more free time and unlimited choices in food and entertainment. Crime has decreased dramatically - although we don’t realize it because we hear about everything bad that happens instantly. According to the document, named "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015" (SOFI), in developing regions, the proportion of undernourished people has almost halved since 1990, decreasing from 23.3% of the population to 12.9%.

All these good trends do not mean there is no sadness in the world. The pain of a loved one being hurt or dying will never cease. Misfortune still happens, and life is not fair. But that is not the point here. Outside of individual circumstances, our collective lives are blessed with advantages never known for thousands of years and up to less than 200 years ago, and in some examples, less than 20 years ago.

So What is the Point?

As I mentioned earlier, we adjust to our conveniences and become ungrateful. Caves were once valued and battled over as the height of shelter. Wouldn’t the cavemen have loved a canvas tent or a log home? Few of us would want to live in a tent these days. These seem to be extreme examples only because of our current standards. But there’s something to be gained by recalling the past and our current fortunes because doing so will ease some of the sorrows or injustices we may feel today putting them in a new perspective. As an example, a young girl living in rural China in 1900 would not spend one moment of sadness for anyone not making the Cheerleading Squad at school. Understanding our times are different, it’s okay to be down for a day if that was you, but move on quickly! Your son may have diabetes, but it can be controlled, giving him a full life, whereas he could have died young in the past.

My family was poor to the point of homelessness at times, but I never recall being hungry, and my education was free, allowing me to move out of that situation. One of my sisters had a baby at seventeen years old and was divorced soon after. She struggled for a while but earned a college degree in her forties because she lived in a society that had a path out if taken, unlike being trapped in a specific class like most societies in the old world and even some countries today.

Summary

Yes, every generation has the story they tell their children of how they walked three miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways. We all had it worse than the generation that followed us. And just like we did, our children laugh at our self-pity. But there is value in children learning and knowing History. That value is gratefulness! Let them read “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Solzhenitsyn. The story is from not so long ago, and it puts some perspective on how some people have been forced to live their lives. Many other novels or history books will tell these true stories. They will be much more useful and effective than our sad stories of how tough life was before smart-phones and Netflix!

Teach your children to:

Welcome challenges, for they make you grow! Know history, for it gives you perspective. Be grateful, for it removes boorishness!

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What Makes a Good Mom?

5/11/2019

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My Mom and me.

I’m a huge fan of moms everywhere! Moms come in all shapes, sizes, temperaments, social and religious backgrounds. They are young and old; some have careers and many stay-at-home. Moms are tough and softies; they have smiles that comfort you and glares that frighten you. When any of their children are threatened moms become super-heroes with powers rarely seen. Their loyalty is unquestioned, and their ability to multitask is simply incredible! Moms are simply God’s gift to humanity.

As a dad and someone who encourages men to be caring parents, emphasizing fathers importance to the welfare of their children and families, there is no doubt moms are the champions of child welfare. We Dads have our role, a crucial role, but few of us would want to be a single parent and provide what mothers provide to our children.

But what makes is a good mom? Only the children she raised can answer that question because the challenges of mothering vary in every instance. One mom can be considered a good parent because she bakes brownies, belongs to the PTO, has dinner on the table every night, and reads to her children. But is she a bad mom if she doesn’t do one or all of these things? I think not. Good moms sacrifice and sacrifices differ. The model mom I described above is doing good things, things that, in my opinion, I wish every mom could do. But these acts are not necessarily the end-all of ‘good’ mothering and may not even be much of a sacrifice given her ability to do it.

Some mothers have to work, manage without a decent or present parenting partner, or both! They may not have the time available to have dinner on the table every night or to read bedtime stories. Some children are more difficult to raise because of illnesses or disabilities, physical or mental. Moms themselves have different strengths and weaknesses. Any seeming lack of parenting skill or talent is apt to be misunderstood without insight into the challenges that exist. What may be easy for one mom may be very difficult for another mom for any number of reasons.

The message here is never to judge a mother by your standards unless those standards are sacrifice and love. I doubt you will find many mothers who lack those two characteristics. But even love and sacrifice are not easily compared. I know my mother was not the kind of mom that fit the popular mold of motherhood. But she certainly loved and sacrificed for her children, maybe more than most! She raised six children without any help or money from my father. She worked many hours in menial jobs to feed us. We had fried chicken dinners on occasion, but often it had to be potted meat sandwiches, a can of soup, or corn flakes.

My wife, Kathy, is without question a good mom, but more traditionally. She more closely fits the image most have of a caring mother being very hands-on, loving, and giving one-on-one time tailored to each child’s idiosyncrasies! My mother was different. She did not have the luxury of tending to each of her children’s different strengths or weaknesses. Survival comes before the nuances of personality. To some outside our home, my mother was not a good mom. It was so evident if one looked at our clothes, our wild behavior, and her frequent absence. She could not meet us at the door when we came home from school. Trips to the zoo, park, or movie were never possible. But she worked hard to feed and raise us without looking for society to do her job.

Those people who would judge my Mom didn’t know the sacrifices she had to make. She had dreams that went unrealized. My mom loved to dance, but never danced. She wanted to look nice but had to wait to get her teeth fixed because rent money took most of what she had. Her children often got into trouble and didn’t do their homework, but she scolded us the best way she knew without the time to read parenting books or pay for counseling. However, to every one of my siblings and me, our mother is revered and loved as much as any mother in the world. We have had struggles and successes like every other brood and better than some who had stay-at-home or any other traditional mom. She didn’t meet the ideal aspects many think of when you think of a good mom. But my mom was a good mom. I love her so much! Happy Mother’s Day!

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What is Easy but Difficult and Does So Much Good?

5/6/2019

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I admit that I need to practice what I am about to write as much as anyone and more than others. But I think everyone has had difficulties in this area at one time or another. It is this. One of the most challenging things for any of us to do is to say, "I'm sorry", and to say it honestly. The reasons this is difficult are many!

Maybe you don't think you were, or are, wrong
Perhaps you are angry enough not to care
It could be you are embarrassed
You don't want to open old wounds or possible ignite a renewed argument
It's possible you just don't know how to say the words

Yes, the excuses are numerous. What we don't do is consider the positive aspects of saying, "I'm sorry", and there are many.

Often, a weight is lifted allowing you to move on
Your admission is a real sign of maturity
It takes away someone's anger towards you
It will enable openings for those you say sorry to you, returning the courtesy by your example
Even if you don't think you were wrong, saying sorry says you don't think a particular issue is worth having hard feelings.

Perhaps one of the reasons adults have a problem with saying they are sorry is because they never learned how or why to do so as children. Sure, when a child does something inappropriate to another, parents will tell them to "say you’re sorry", and they will most of the time. Young children just want to get out of trouble; they aren’t concerned about a weight being lifted and are not apt to act maturely. As adults, we need to forget our childish ways and weigh the situation, apologizing if appropriate. But that doesn’t mean we should always apologize, because there are good reasons not to do so. For instance,

An apology is not in order when no wrong has taken place, even if someone else thinks so
A weak apology is like no apology
An insincere apology for deception is unethical and harmful

In a sappy movie from my youth, there was a line, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” I never knew what that was supposed to mean. To me, love means saying you’re sorry, especially when you love someone you may have hurt. Having said all this, I know I may pass up opportunities to say I’m sorry when I should. I’ve been there, and so have you. It is difficult sometimes. Maybe, however, having thought about it and writing it down, there is a better chance I will do the right thing in the future. I hope so! I know one thing, I’m not sorry for writing this.

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How to be Stupid!

Learning to be Grateful

​What Makes a Good Mom?

What is Easy but Difficult and Does So Much Good?

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