February 26, 2013
Prayers go out to the family of my boss. His nephew was shot in a drug deal gone bad Sunday night and he died Monday. He was 17. Good kid, bad decisions, was how the situation was texted to me.
I used the opportunity to sit down with CJ and discuss peer pressure and the stuff out there in the world that is messed up. Fortunately, the basis of information he has from me is that the reason to either do drugs or drink alcohol is to change what your personality normally is. If you are at a gathering and want to open up some, it can do that. If you are overstressed and want to calm down, it can do that. However, taking either of these scenarios too far has consequences. I am sure plenty of you have seen or been the excessive result, as have I. I have never done drugs, but I drank plenty in college. I was the guy overly depressed about those bad relationships gone wrong on Dallas. I was the guy who friends would tell the next day, "you were so funny last night!" "Was I funny ha ha, or funny peculiar? Wait, I don't want to know."
I made questionable morality decisions and had a brush with the law. I drove when I should not have. Excessive alcohol changed who I was and did not make me a better person than I was sober. While I haven't shared all of my mistakes with CJ, I think he got the idea that changing your personality by using a substance and dealing with the consequences of the extremes it may cause, or the loss of your brain's filter, is not something he should be dealing with. So far, so good. He likes his personality the way it is.
Please have that talk with your child if you have not. And think of the example you may be setting. The result may be that you do not have to experience the loss of your honor-student teen-age son since he and his friends decided they needed to buy some pot.
In hopefully lighter news, I would submit to you a question. Here is the background.
I was helping a young man who had a tattoo on his hand. It spanned the knuckles on the top of his fingers and was the letters T I M E. Why, do you think, he had this tattooed on his hand? What reminder was it serving him? (Since he was having trouble remembering the PIN for his debit card, I had hoped he had that tattooed on his other hand, but he did not.)
Here are three submissions thus far.
1. I say, he has time on his hands and is just being witty.
2. A friend says he served time and is using his tattoo as his legal compass reminder that he does not want to go back.
3. CJ says he wants the person he just punched to know that he got clocked.
What do you think?
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Saturday, February 16, 2013
You Can Call me Owl
February 16, 2013
It has been two weeks since I last posted. I know that using our Gregorian calendar you have realized that it seems like January 29th was kind of a month ago, but here is the deal. I wrote a post on February 2nd that was nothing short of brilliant. If you had read it, you would have laughed, cried, hugged yourself and then called Pulitzer. However, with a mere 6 words left to scribe, I lost everything. Including my patience. Thusly and therefore, away went that post and nearly our computer.
The main serious point I wanted to make in that post was that if you received an email from me advertising some stay-at-home and make money offer, that was not really from me. I wish I knew how you could work from home and make millions, but I do not. Someone hacked our email account and sent it out to the whole address book. Thank God it was not some virus porn thing. I cannot imagine how many pieces of hate mail I would have received had you gotten a virus that made some guy pop through your computer screen hollering, "WHERE'S YOUR DAUGHTER!"
For those of you not in my address book, I am guessing you are not considering a connection. It's okay, I understand.
As for goings on in our world, here are some updates. We had a wonderful Valentine's Day. CJ and his girlfriend exchanged very nice gifts. With the help of his mom, CJ gave her an owl pillow as his GF really likes owls. I mean, whoooo doesn't. GF gave him a homemade heart-shaped chocolate chip cookie that was awesome. He shared it and may have regretted that decisions as I could not stop eating it. I was looking to see how many bites it took to get to the chocolate chip center.
My coworkers kept asking me what I was getting Beth for Vday and I finally made a sweeping gesture of myself and stated, "she gets to experience this every day." They assured me that I better show up with some flowers, candy, AND jewelry. None of them will be getting raises this year.
In other CJ news, he is doing well at school and in his Jazz ensemble. His PSAT scores have garnered him scores of college recruiting emails. Most of them reference his legacy, but I do not remember the PSAT being around when my dad was in high school. So CJ world is good. His GF is in Vegas baby this weekend playing in a soccer tournament with her select team. When she takes the PSAT next year, every college in America is going to email this young lady to get her to come to their school as a student athlete.
As for Beth, work has been quite stressful as there has been a scandal going on and it has caused an enormous distraction. Please make sure you know what is going on with your teenager and their phone. Privacy rules should not apply.
Finally, for me life is good. I have not gotten a store yet, but I have heard rumors that something may happen soon. In the retail world, "soon" is all relative, but I am still well thought of and have not done anything to affect my status. I even worked a very difficult stretch of days without losing my patience with anyone. It took a lot of Diet Coke, but I did it. So before I lose this post, here it is.
It has been two weeks since I last posted. I know that using our Gregorian calendar you have realized that it seems like January 29th was kind of a month ago, but here is the deal. I wrote a post on February 2nd that was nothing short of brilliant. If you had read it, you would have laughed, cried, hugged yourself and then called Pulitzer. However, with a mere 6 words left to scribe, I lost everything. Including my patience. Thusly and therefore, away went that post and nearly our computer.
The main serious point I wanted to make in that post was that if you received an email from me advertising some stay-at-home and make money offer, that was not really from me. I wish I knew how you could work from home and make millions, but I do not. Someone hacked our email account and sent it out to the whole address book. Thank God it was not some virus porn thing. I cannot imagine how many pieces of hate mail I would have received had you gotten a virus that made some guy pop through your computer screen hollering, "WHERE'S YOUR DAUGHTER!"
For those of you not in my address book, I am guessing you are not considering a connection. It's okay, I understand.
As for goings on in our world, here are some updates. We had a wonderful Valentine's Day. CJ and his girlfriend exchanged very nice gifts. With the help of his mom, CJ gave her an owl pillow as his GF really likes owls. I mean, whoooo doesn't. GF gave him a homemade heart-shaped chocolate chip cookie that was awesome. He shared it and may have regretted that decisions as I could not stop eating it. I was looking to see how many bites it took to get to the chocolate chip center.
My coworkers kept asking me what I was getting Beth for Vday and I finally made a sweeping gesture of myself and stated, "she gets to experience this every day." They assured me that I better show up with some flowers, candy, AND jewelry. None of them will be getting raises this year.
In other CJ news, he is doing well at school and in his Jazz ensemble. His PSAT scores have garnered him scores of college recruiting emails. Most of them reference his legacy, but I do not remember the PSAT being around when my dad was in high school. So CJ world is good. His GF is in Vegas baby this weekend playing in a soccer tournament with her select team. When she takes the PSAT next year, every college in America is going to email this young lady to get her to come to their school as a student athlete.
As for Beth, work has been quite stressful as there has been a scandal going on and it has caused an enormous distraction. Please make sure you know what is going on with your teenager and their phone. Privacy rules should not apply.
Finally, for me life is good. I have not gotten a store yet, but I have heard rumors that something may happen soon. In the retail world, "soon" is all relative, but I am still well thought of and have not done anything to affect my status. I even worked a very difficult stretch of days without losing my patience with anyone. It took a lot of Diet Coke, but I did it. So before I lose this post, here it is.
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