When I was a kid, I lived, breathed, ate, drank and slept fishing. I remember once when I was home sick with strep, my Mom brought me some fishing magazines, and I read them cover-to-cover, over-and-over, for four days. Burned ‘em into my brain.
I had this recurring dream throughout those years. In the dream, I discovered that there was a pond right in the park across the street from my house. Somehow it had been there all along, but I had never noticed it. And this pond had some huge fish swimming in it. So I’d walk over there, toss in a line, and pull out these monster world-record bass. That’s right, world record bass right up there in Massachusetts. And for an obsessed kid who was still years away from driving, having a fishing spot not only within biking distance, but actually right across the street? It was almost better than that time my buddy Tommy and I found his grandfather’s Playboy stash. But I digress…
So cut to real life, a few years later. One day in Junior High, I was talking to some friends, and I randomly learned that maybe a couple hundred yards away from the school, on the side opposite how I always arrived, there was a small pond. I’d never seen it because we never went over there. It was past the teacher’s parking lot, and students weren’t allowed over on that side of the building. So I’d never Read more »
So the little man has an annoying habit. We’ll be walking down the street, or across a parking lot, or wherever, and he’ll stop to pick up some random bit of interesting-looking trash. Now this is an 8-year-old we’re talking about here, not some toddler. But if you have, or have had any contact whatsoever with, a male child, then you know that discussions regarding germs, bacteria, or hand-washing are completely useless.
It all started a couple of years back when his Cub Scout den talked about the “leave no trace” ethic. Well kudos to Den Leader Matt, the lesson stuck.
Now look, I’m all for picking up after oneself, especially when traipsing through the wilderness, the psuedo-wilderness of the scout camp, or even the local park. But there have to be limits, or you’ll Read more »
If you’re old like me, you might remember this bit of internet humor that went around in the mid-nineties. It was a supposed high school paired writing assignment that went south very quickly. See Alex Bogusy and Snopes for a couple of examples of the story.
Cut to last night. We’re driving to dinner, and Styx’s “Come Sail Away” came on the classic rock station. Now, just to be clear, I love Styx. The Grand Illusion was the first album I ever Read more »
The other day was my 2nd-grader’s inaugural ride in the front seat of the van.
He was checking out the new view from up there: Dad, what’s that? What’s that one? What’s that? I was explaining what a tachometer is, and trying to figure out why our Honda Odyssey even needs one, when he read the passenger-side mirror: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear”.
So I explained what that was all about, and it got me thinking. The 2 rearview mirrors have completely different functions, different magnifications. And they’re not interchangeable.
If the driver’s side was zoomed out and convex like the passenger’s, you wouldn’t know Read more »
So I got laid off about a month ago.
I’d love to write you a few thoughtful paragraphs about how I’m feeling, what I’m doing, and what the future may hold. But I’m in kind of a bullet-point mood, so here goes a few random observations:
- The severance package was decent enough (I’d been there for just short of 10 years), so I’m not feeling a panicked urgency to take whatever I can find. I’m trying to balance spending enough time to find a good fit, with not Read more »
My head is spinning right now. I’ve come to an unexpected realization:
I don’t really care how my kids do in school.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to underparent. I care very much what they do in school. I care about what they learn, I care about how they treat other people, and how others interact with them. It’s just that I feel like maybe I’ve finally turned some corner with not having any of my own ego tied up in their being A students with 160 IQ’s.
Carlin had a riff that went something like “Think about how dumb the average person you meet is. Now realize that half of the people in this world are dumber than that.”
Read more »