the day after chatting with my uncle jerry about business, i had lunch with a cousin of mine, also named jerry. cousin jerry is also a bit of a business savant (these two jerrys perhaps being the best businessmen in my entire family). i told him of my uncle's advice. he smiled and said, "yeah, that's good". i then turned the question to him and asked if he's had any advice he lived by. his reply.
COUSIN JERRY
i have two business rules i live by. first, i'd never buy a horse from an amish man and second, i'd never buy a hotel from a pakistani.
TROY
hah. i bet they're not teaching those lessons at wharton. can i ask why or how those rules came about?
COUSIN JERRY
sure. if an amish man is willing to part with a horse it means that horse is no good because that's the only way an amish man would let a horse go and if a pakistani can't make a hotel work, i'd wager there's no one around that can because you know that paki has tried everything under the sun to make a go of it, and if he can't make it, i'm pretty sure i couldn't either.
these answers are for-sure every bit as colorful as my cousin. further, i'd put cousin jerry up against any mba you could find to solve a business problem. in part because at the end of the work day and after dinner, i bet your mba wouldn't be sliding back in his car to go work a few repossessions before bedtime (see 'and then some' in part 1).
i have a website idea for someone—a site that records funny things said by adults around kids, that the kids don't get, and no other adults were around to hear.
my contribution would be when alex and i shared the following exchange.
ALEX
dad, why do you call everyone 'bud'?
TROY
because don johnson already took 'pal'.
if you don't get the reference it means you did something more interesting with your friday nights in the late eighties than watching miami vice.
the director of my office sent an email to our young, female center coordinator. in the message he meant to request the following.
i need you to please contact the editors of the following journals.
instead his email read
i need you to please the editors of the following journals.
when i arrived at the office, because of the dropped 'contact', the recipient of the message read the sentence to me, asking what she should do. before i had time to respond a graduate student in our space who overheard the question said, "the only proper response is to write back and ask if you can please them one at a time or have to please them all at once."
this was far more entertaining than anything i had planned.
we received this message from a neighbor mom while anthony was down playing at her house.
Ben and Anthony were trying to decide what to do. They didn't like my suggestions, so Anthony decided to call upon God for advice. He yelled, "God! What should we do?"
Not sure if he or she answered, but they are on the trampoline now!
last week our family watched a film called babysitter beware for our friday night movie. there was a scene at the beginning of the film where these kids put a dog's shock collar around an evil neighbor's neck and then repeatedly tricked him into shocking himself. on the following tuesday at breakfast, anthony said the following in regard to that film.
you know that guy that they shocked at the beginning of the show. when the show ended and they started showing all the names they should have had that guy yell like he just got shocked playing in the background.
i stopped making my lunches contemplating his notion, shook my head in agreement and told him i thought that he was right and that would have been a smart and funny add. i finished lunches marveling at the human brain, and the young mind sitting in my kitchen presently, that conjured that specific thought days after the initial experience.
for any envious of me getting to be entertained by my witty six year old so, let me share what came out of my cerebral cherub's mouth seventeen minutes later after i pissed him off for goofing around in the backyard when he was supposed to be getting in the car. after finally sliding into the backseat and slamming the door in a huff, he proceeded to light me up.
ANTHONY
i wish i came out of someone else's stomach.
TROY
what? why would you say that? we're going to school, we're not playing in the backyard.
ANTHONY
i wasn't playing. i was trying to walk to the garage without getting mud on my shoes.
TROY
well, i'm sorry. i didn't know that was what you're doing.
ANTHONY
i didn't want to track mud into my school. what kind of parent yells at their child for trying to be respectful of their school?
welcome to another glorious day in the corps of parenthood.
MARTY
that stove is going to look bare one day without your kettle on it.
TROY
where's my kettle going?
MARTY
when you die.
TROY
that's a lovely morning thought to get my day off to a booming start.
MARTY
i do what i can.
shortly after marty and i began dating, in one of those early relationship questions, i asked marty if i died how long she thought it would be before she would date someone else. she thought for a few moments before saying, in a fully seriously tone, "i'm sure it would be at least a week."
a week! a week! now i'd be the first to admit the three years i wished she would say might have been a touch ambitious but a week. in seeing my startled response she quickly adjusted, saying, "not a week -- longer than a week" and then as if bracing for a firecracker to pop added probingly, "like a month -- three months". marty is pragmatic even in matters of the heart, even in matters of new love. but without this cut to the bone approach, marty wouldn't be marty.
she did pay for her cruel offense by shouldering six months of jokes about trying to pick up guys at my funeral and if it would be gauche to invite cute fellas who didn't know me to the funeral just so she could get a jump on the replacement relationship.
several years later when our path together looked a bit more certain, in a quiet moment marty said out of the blue, "ok. so maybe i'd need more than a week before taking up with some new guy." nicer words were never said to my young, longing heart.
You know, all the world's religions, so many of them represented here today, start with a simple question. Why are we here? What gives our life meaning? What gives our acts purpose?
We know our time on this Earth is fleeting. We know that we will each have our share of pleasure and pain, that even after we chase after some earthly goal, whether it's wealth or powe...
i'm beyond good being on a need-to-know designation.
lick your finger and push down on it
these were the first words i heard coming out of sleep on the morning of friday, november 16th. marty spoke those possibly scary words. they were directed, i assume and hope, towards one of our three children. i'm not sure which one. i've been a parent of miniature humans long enough to know that you not only have to pick your battles but you also have to pick your details. there's only so much granular kid-centric data the average man can shoulder.
he's probably a quicker wit than most in his zip code too.
from a bill murray interview. when asked if he thought he was a gifted actor, he replied, "i'm pretty good at what i do. i'm as good as anyone in my neighborhood."
what a great answer to a really un-great question.
what a great exercise, thoughtfully and thoroughly done
Yes, the relationships with our children matter most, but I found myself wondering if my son had learned enough from me, whether he was prepared. So what do I want him to have learned as I send him on his way, off on his own? What do I want him to understand about life? What will help guide him through any difficult times? If I could only just tell him.
Hey wait! I can!
Here is what I want him to know; some words of wisdom that will guide him reasonably happily through life.
Always know that—
No matter what happens to you in life—no matter what ups and downs life may bring—you have all the health and well-being inside you that you will ever need, it can never be destroyed, and it contains the wisdom and common sense to guide you through life.
All you need to do to hear it is to quiet your mind or clear our head (which you can do in any way that suits you), and it will speak to you in the form of common sense thoughts popping into your head—so all you need to do is trust that it's there.
When you feel frustrated or angry or irritable or down or bored or lazy, or any of those emotions, the more you know that those feelings are coming from your own thoughts, and those thoughts are coming only from the way you're seeing things at the moment—and that can change—the less you will be controlled by those emotions. The more you notice and are aware of what you're feeling at those times and the less you take those thoughts too seriously because those thoughts are just tricking you by giving you faulty messages, the less you will be controlled by those emotions. The more you can't let go of something, the further way you are from that healthy, but you're the one making it up—inadvertently.
The more you understand that everyone sees the world in a completely different way from everyone else because of their own way of thinking, and their world makes as much sense to them as yours does to you, and you can't talk anyone out of their world any more than they can talk you out of yours, the less you will be bothered and troubled by others.
The more you recognize your moods, and that you think differently about the same situation depending on your moods, and the more you wait until your mood rises before acting or saying anything, the better off you'll be and the better people will respond to you.
If someone does you wrong or treats you badly—it's just that he's lost—his world is telling him to act that way, and he is just doing the best he knows how to do at the time, given how he sees things. If you can see him as innocent because he can't see a better way at that time, and if you see him with compassion because he must be hurting to be taking it out on you, and if you don't take what they do or say personally, you will be protected emotionally from what he and others do [Note: This does not mean not taking appropriate action, when necessary.]
Whenever you're down in the dumps or caught up in your emotions and you can't seem to change your thinking, all you need to remember is that your thoughts will eventually change and, with them, you will see your situation or that person differently. What you see as "reality" or "the way it is" now will change as your thinking changes—and it always does. So you don't have to get so caught up in the way you think it is now—because how it looks now is guaranteed to change, eventually.
The way you treat others creates what you get back in return.
People who achieve what they want in life believe they can do it, trust that what they want will fall into place for them, if they work hard to get it and don't give up. And if it doesn't work out, have faith that you will be okay—it is all unfolding perfectly—no matter what.
We will always be there for you if you need us.
We will always love you no matter what you do!
excerpt from parenting from the heart by Jack Pransky
excerpt from bella's essay "what i learned from another" she penned when she was nine years old.
I learned to knit when i was six years old. My aunt had taught me. My family had went to Chicago to visit my Aunt Cherry and Uncle Tim. I had wandered into my aunt's room, I loved her room. Her walls were painted with the scene of a sunny beach, the rolling waves and the ladies tanning on t ...
Two of the most valuable things we have are time and our relationships with other people. In our age of increasing distractions, it's more important than ever to find ways to maintain perspective and remember that life is brief and tender. Death is something that we're often discouraged to talk about or even think about, but I've realized that preparing for death is one of the most empowering things you can do. Thinking about death clarifies your life.
excerpt from candy chang's "before i die i want to ..." ted talk (link)
last year marty subbed for three weeks. after the tour i asked her if there were any noticeable changes in the classroom over the last decade. she said, yes, one, there were no smartphones ten years ago.
now that she's there more often her time off is showing in other ways too. when the teachers were getting their rooms ready marty walked into the science teachers office and asked:
MARTY
does anyone have an easel-pad.
YOUNG COLLEAGUE
what's an easel-pad?
MARTY
it's a big sheet of paper you can write stuff on.
YOUNG COLLEAGUE
i don't have an easel-pad but i think i got some slates you can borrow.
i have a friend who is an outdoorsman, both out of interest and profession. whenever i have an expensive or uncertain purchase to make, i reach out to him and each time he answers. virtually every time i hear back from him (as i try not to pester him too often), i'm astonished anew at his breadth of insight and depth of his thoughtfulness. being a collector of thoughtful objects i wished to add th...
i won't ruin the fun of letting your imagination run with that one. enjoy your weekend. i'll betcha mine will be more memorable than yours ... more on that next week.
a few people named two of this year's commencement addresses as the best, or most inspirational at least. the first, by cartoonist mike peters, happened where i work, the second, by author neil gaiman, took place at an art school in Philadelphia. as someone who dabbles in presentations (and is a commencement speech junkie) i was struck by how stupendously different the two approaches were. peters started out in such a meandering fashion you wondered if he prepared anything. gaiman's talk was so dense the first thing i did after watching it was find a transcript and re-read it marking it up with my symbols and notes like it were an academic text.
while i enjoyed both, gaiman's was rich with insight. in example:
People keep working, in a freelance world, and more and more of today's world is freelance, because their work is good, and because they are easy to get along with, and because they deliver the work on time. And you don't even need all three. Two out of three is fine. People will tolerate how unpleasant you are if your work is good and you deliver it on time. They'll forgive the lateness of the work if it's good, and if they like you. And you don't have to be as good as the others if you're on time and it's always a pleasure to hear from you.
that has to be one of the most cogent insights into the professional world ever made. and i know the guy writes for a living but the compact, precise articulation of his concept is breathtaking in a literary and observational sense. if i ever met that guy, the question i would ask him is how he came upon that insight. did it bleed out over months or did it appear in a flash while showering or exercising. furthermore, gaiman demonstrates how life experience blows the doors off most other forms of learning and how the art of introspection is the prism that allows you to understand what unfolds around us. spectacular.
one of the family that came of marty's smores party had four kids. all boys. their children's ages perfectly align with our kids except they have an extra one, a three year old, on the end. with four kids eleven and under in your care, you can imagine how little uninterrupted social time they had to talk with others. all evening their kids ran up interrupting their conversations in need of help with a toy, a thirst, or an injustice. as the night wound down and the father gave the five minute warning, the children disappeared from view and never returned (excepting the three year old who was asleep on the mother's lap). after ten minutes time and conversation the man said, "wow. i haven't seen any of my kids since i told them we would be leaving soon. this is kind of nice. in the future i think i'll give the five minute warning ten minutes after showing up."
his discovery reminds me of the advice my father in law, pappa ken, gave me after we had kids: "you just gotta be smarter than your kids." i know i've mentioned this wisdom before, but i think of it often. surprisingly often. on paper it sounds trivial enough. in practice it is most slippery.
if you're not laughing routinely, you're not listening hard enough
"i had to ride my bike home with a stapler in my underwear."
marty's response to the question of how her day went.
there's a saying that kids say the funniest/darnedest things. there should be another saying that says kids make parents say the funniest/darnedest things.
whenever bella hears me talking to anyone about swimming, she sidles up next to me and waits for a break in the conversation. when one comes she proudly announces that she can swim faster than her dad. then realizing she has cast me in an embarrassing light, she softens the blow by confessing, "but there's a reason. you see, i'm a sprinter and he's a lengther."
there's more than one reason they call them scratchers
at my last job once a week the database guy at my shop walked the aisles of cubes collecting money for lottery tickets. everyone would hand him a wrinkled buck or two, he'd make a scratch on a small piece of paper, and move to the next. then at lunch or on the way home, he'd buy a block of lottery tickets with the money. routinely i was the only one who did not participate. routinely he was the one who would shake his head and tsk-tsk my decision, saying i'd be really sorry if they ever won because i'd be the only one left in the office to hold all of these systems afloat. to this i said if they all won, in a year's time i'd be the happiest one of everyone involved. that comment bought me many a debate on the merits and ills of an average person coming into an un-average flood of money.
my belief on the lottery system spread through the office and my lottery-playing co-workers would appear at my cube in twos, threes, and fours to confirm what they heard and question the source. i would confess to the row of bemused expressions that i did believe they would all be miserable if they won the lottery. when pressed on how that could possibly be i would explain. i would single out one of the gawkers asking about their family. parents still living? how many siblings? aunts? uncles? friends? after getting a sense for the inventory of friends and relations i'd ask what their plan for all of them was. they always had a plan which i imagined got drawn up in their forty plus minute commutes home. their presence would gain a beat as they excitedly stepped through the awards each tier of the family would get thinking they were the first to stagger the amounts with such acumen. i'd then move us along saying ...
ok. so you give the sister you don't like so much and her husband fifty grand just like you did for your other siblings and in nine month's they're reporting the t-shirt decal business they invested in went under because there are now printers and special paper that can make decals every bit as good as theirs. but now they have a great new idea and it can't loose but they just need another thirty grand to get it off the ground. what do you say to this? (now some people say they will give them the 30k. when that happens, i bring the bad business duo back in another five months asking for more. and again. and again. eventually everyone says they have to at some point say no.) i agree. you do have to say no. but what do you think that eventual line in the sand will do with your relationship with your sister who you previously had no significant angst with? and then how do you react when your other siblings call and express shock that you wouldn't give her more, and they just had a bad break, and you've got so much, more than you can even use, and it's not like you did anything to earn it, how could you tell your own sister no, how could you be so heartless? then your dad calls. and then your mom. and then what does the next family gathering look like? you pulling up in your fancy car while you're sister couldn't come because she and her obnoxious hubby are getting put out of their duplex because they lost their business just because you wouldn't give them another thirty grand which for anyone else under the picnic gazebo would be like dropping a dollar bill in the turned up hat of a sightless beggar. you're fully convinced it was the right choice. maybe it was the right choice. but do your friends and family agree?
while all of my arguments were based on simple conjecture which were based on scenarios i'd drawn up in my head, after more than a decade of my lottery-conviction, i heard my first bit of first-hand evidence through the aunt of a close friend of mine (and a woman i had socialized with as recently as six months back). four years ago this woman's christmas list was 225 addresses long. then her husband died and she was awarded one point five million dollars. guess how many names were on her christmas list last year, or rather, three years after she was handed one point five millions dollars? when i asked bella this question, she guessed 1,000. i had to tell her the real answer was seven. and then less than three months after the seven-name christmas she took her life with a handgun she had from earlier times.
there's a lot of wisdom packed into that 8 year-old, fifty pound frame
alex grabbed a heavy rain-coat as we were heading out for dinner. i told him to lose the coat as it was nice out. he said he wanted to take it. shrugging my shoulders in a 'whatever' manner i ushered him out the door. after we ate and were about to walk out to the car we found it pouring rain. the only one of us who didn't groan in the doorway was alex, given the raincoat he was pulling on at the sight of the torrent. after racing through the puddled parking lot and piling into the van, marty told alex it was smart of him to bring the coat. to this he said, "well, it rained earlier in the day and when it rains once it can always rain twice. you just never know about the weather."
a friend of mine who is a university philosophy professor recently asked me to pre-read a book he wrote on happiness. i think i came to mind because i've probably read more books on positive psychology and happiness than most. of all the great points he illustrated in his book, my favorite line was, "One should not be an asshole in the pursuit of happiness." while it might seem overly obvious, i reckon we've all bumped into a soul or two who would benefit from such counsel.
