Lessons in Life Articles

When I was . . .

4 years old: My daddy can do anything.

5 years old: My daddy knows a whole lot.

6 years old: My dad is smarter than your dad.

8 years old: My dad doesn't know exactly everything.

10 years old: In the olden days, when my dad grew up, things were sure different.

12 years old: Oh, well, naturally, Dad doesn't know anything about that. He is too old to remember his childhood.

14 years old: Don't pay any attention to my dad. He is so old-fashioned.

21 years old: Him? My Lord, he's hopelessly out of date.

25 years old: Dad knows about it, but then he should, because he has been around so long.

30 years old: Maybe we should ask Dad what he thinks. After all, he's had a lot of experience.

35 years old: I'm not doing a single thing until I talk to Dad.

40 years old: I wonder how Dad would have handled it. He was so wise.

45 years old: I'd give anything if Dad were here now so I could talk this over with him.

50 years old: It's too bad I didn't appreciate sooner just how smart Dad really was. I could have learned a lot more from him.

Author Unknown

May 9, 2007

Lessons in Life:

If You Think as a Parent that Little League Baseball Does Not Teach Important Survival Skills, Think Again

Sometimes as parents we forget how simple and subtle the lessons in life can be.

I was reminded of this yesterday afternoon when I heard the cheering of youngsters playing a Little League baseball game in the nearby city park. It is amazing when the noise of kids at play can carry the sound a half-block away and into the open window of your living room.

Little League baseball games can get noisy. Kids are excited when the bases are loaded and their next hitter sends a screaming line drive into the outfield.

They know that the outfielder will likely boot the ball, and as it gets by him on its merry way to the fence, all three players on base will score and the hitter will probably come home safe with an inside-the-park home run and 4 ribbies (runs batted in) to his credit.

Ah, baseball, spring is in the air and summer is approaching.

The pure fun of sport is so normal and so natural to our human experience.

I read a study once that interviewed hardened criminals spending life in prison for capital crimes, such as murder. A psychologist asked inmates what they missed most now that they were spending the rest of their lives behind bars without possibility of parole.

The answer stunned me, and it should stun you too. What they missed most was not their girlfriend, or sex, or drinking, or drugging, or gambling; it was the sound of kids playing. Perhaps the one, real, positive memory they have of their life was when they were a child playing.

These are two compelling extremes: children at play without a care in the world, and incarcerated criminals who are burdened with the reality that they will never again be free to play.

With all of the violence we are now seeing with youngsters who solve their supposed "problems" by shooting their perceived "enemies" (many times friends and family), I am reminded that some of our children today seem less able to cope with adversity, and even less so with patience.

How is it that they clearly lack coping skills and patience, two necessary traits for survival as an adult?

It will take someone a lot smarter than me to give you the right answer to this question.

I will leave that answer to what some educated professionals who study psychology think.

In the meantime, I choose not to tell you what I think, but to share with you what I know.

Here is one thing about Little League baseball that is being taught by some parents and some leaders in some organizations that is really not worth teaching, and that is this:

Certain organizations have adopted the misguided practice of rewarding every kid on each team regardless of their effort or performance. In other words, a team can lose every game all year and each kid gets a trophy for participating, a team picture and his or her own baseball card with their mug on it.

Apparently some parents do not want to hurt their child's feelings even though the child makes little effort, is clearly incompetent at improving on any skills of the game, does not understand the game, and really could care less.

I doubt the parents in the example given have a clue about the lessons they are teaching their children by insisting on this foolish practice of making their child feel like he or she has accomplished something.

First, they are encouraging mediocrity by rewarding nothingness. Practice this stupidity a few more generations and we will have our children thinking they can show up to work as an adult, do nothing and get paid for their lack of skills, effort and production.

Second, they are rewarding children for having no concept of goal-setting and achieving goals. The parents are not encouraging any concept of self-improvement and providing no incentive to do so.

Third, they are teaching no learning skills in how to cope with failure, and not providing a shred of understanding about the function of failing. Losers would be astonished to learn that successful people have failed more than losers ever thought of failing.

One of the big differences between losers and winners in the game of life is that when winners fail, they get right back up, dust themselves off, learn from the experience, and try again.

Fourth, they devalue the kids who do work hard, fail and then succeed by rewarding a bunch of kids who haul off and do nothing, learn nothing, and have no sense of real accomplishment.

I remember going door-to-door as a 9-year-old kid, looking for a sponsor for a baseball team I was putting together. I instinctively knew kids would want to be on my team if I could get them a free baseball hat and shirt; we would then look like a real team. I had played on a team that had nothing; we could not afford uniforms, we were lucky to have a glove or borrow a glove.

I found that sponsor, a business called Jewell Realty in Flint, Michigan. I found a sponsor because I was looking for a sponsor. The people that owned that business were impressed that a 9-year-old kid would have the guts to walk all over town and ask businesses to sponsor his rag-tag team. I put up with the nos and getting kicked out of places because I wanted it that bad.

The year was 1953 and we were terrible; we lost more games than we won. We were put upon, put down, slapped around and got the crap kicked out of us, but I never quit, and I made sure my teammates didn't quit either. When someone quit trying, I kicked him off the team and found someone else.

Two years later we won the league championship, and when we did, I was surrounded by winners who had become my friends. I did not need my parents to do this for me, I did not need some meddling adult or juvenile counselor to do this for me, I needed to do this for myself.

When I got the guys together and we took that trophy down to Jewell Realty, we all shared in the excitement of being winners. Later that summer I would walk by Jewell Realty, see that trophy in the window, and know who I was and what I had become: a winner. Jewell Realty did not win that trophy, I won that trophy, and I knew what it would take to win another.

Our parents never saw us play, they were too busy working.

If someone had come around after that first season and given each of us a trophy for losing, we would not have accepted it. Think about it: the message they would have been sending us was we think you are so bad that you could never win a title, so in order to sooth your precious little feelings, here is a trophy for being a loser.

I think I would have spit in their face. I was that competitive. I might have been a 9 year old but I did not need some meddling parent setting goals for me that I thought were so low I would trip on them walking across the baseball diamond.

If you think a 9-year-old child cannot have some dignity, you are dead wrong, and have probably been wrong about a lot of things in your life.

Once we won that championship and experienced our moment of victory, you could have taken that trophy away and it would not have mattered. I knew what I had sacrificed to win that trophy, and after all of the blood, sweat and tears, nothing any stupid parent or adult could do would have made me feel less about myself. I knew I was a winner, and I wasn't going to settle for anything less.

Parents, if you do not understand one thing in raising your children, understand this: if your child goes through his or her entire schooling period (kindergarten through high school graduation) and never experiences real success at anything at least one day is his or her life, your child will be handicapped for life. Nothing could be more arcane, stupid and bovine.

Don't you dare try to prevent your child from failing. Let them try and when they fail, pick them up, dust them off, and encourage them to try again. It is in failing that we learn to succeed.

If you as a parent cannot be a winner in your own pathetic life, if all you have to offer is whining and complaining about this and that, and bemoaning how your child is treated, then get the hell out of the way and let your child fail to ultimately win on his own.

Take a snapshot of two pictures.

In one a child is given a trophy, a team photo and a baseball card with his picture on it featuring a loser who accomplished nothing. In the other snapshot, a child is given only a trophy, or the team is given one trophy to admire, because they have worked their butts off, improved their skills, played their hearts out, taken risks and won a league title. Which is your child?

Any child who has worked to get to the top of the mountain, and experiences the sheer joy of competing and winning, is someone who will go much farther in life.

I can tell you from experience in hiring that there is an incredible correlation between having athletic success at the high school or college level and success later in life. The reason is simple: winners win and losers don't.

Do not misunderstand what I am sharing here. It is not that you cannot win bigger and better in life unless you are a successful athlete in your youth, it is that you need to have a sense of accomplishment and recognition doing something that takes hard work, dedication, effort and goals. It could be singing, it could be acting, it could be playing a musical instrument; suffice to say any activity that allows you to fail, learn, improve and succeed over a period of time.

It certainly helps to have a strong father in the house to help teach his children what it is to be a winner, to learn coping skills, patience, hard work, dedication, effort, improvement and success. A strong single mother can do the same.

Do not play patty-cake with your children when they are 9 years old, do not knowingly set them up in life to fail, let them struggle and succeed. If you do not do this someday they will be adult and not know how to act when they are put down, put upon, made fun of and beaten up emotionally. They will figure it out if you do not protect them and their feelings so much they become helpless and inept.

They will learn to cope and be stronger for the experience. When they reach adulthood they will be able to dismiss people around them who have mediocre minds and are mental midgets. They will be polite as they treat these losers as irrelevant (which they are) and be unaffected by their negative presence.

Then they will move on quickly to be with the winners. It is the losers who are left standing alone and wondering why.

Do not play to participate, play to win. It is not winning that is the be all to end all, it is that in the process of winning we learn important skills that make us much more effective in playing and winning in the game of life. After all, life is not a resting place; life is a testing place, it is now and will continue to be as long as you live.

A wise man said it and it bears repeating here: When everyone is somebody then no one's anybody.

December 2, 2006

Lessons in Life:

The Real Heroes of Our Time Are Those Who Serve Others

A friend of mine recently suffered the loss of her father. I bought her a sympathy card and then felt that at such a difficult time in her life it was so inadequate. So I wrote her the following letter and share it with you because I believe my message to her is timeless in a time of need.

My Dearest Mary,

I am sorry to hear about the loss of your father.

Words on a card are so inadequate to express how we feel when describing a tragedy. There is such a sting when our heart breaks from sadness, and we sense that we will never be the same. We seek understanding and sometimes find ourselves alone with our thoughts when we ask: Who could have meant so much to us as the one we have lost?

I find it difficult to accept the notion that death is part of life. One seems so alive and real, and the other so quiet and distant. I would be totally lost in accepting what is so natural and normal were it not for the fact that my life journey is also my faith journey.

Thank goodness that God is in my life. He stands with us at our greatest hour of need. God brings us three vital elements when tragedy strikes our life:

1) He is with us when we are with Him.

2) He loves us and comforts us as no one else can.

3) He takes us to a better place.

I found I could bridge the gap between life and death, and death and life, through my faith walk with understanding and wisdom. Understanding comes from developing a gentle heart, and maturity in living.

Wisdom, however, does not come from learning. One could read every book in every library in the world and still not have wisdom. Wisdom only comes from God, and we must ask Him for it. It is through the grace of God that we enjoy wisdom, He freely gives it to us, but we must ask Him for it.

It has been 11 years since I flew back to Michigan to be a caregiver for my mother during her final days. She displayed such courage and grace when her time to pass had come. It was a beautiful example of modeling at a critical time for both of us.

I was very close to my mother. You have perhaps seen the medal I wear around my neck. Many who see it think that it is a medal of Mary. It is a medal of St. Mildred, an obscure saint who lived in England during the early Middle Ages and died around the year 700.

My mother Mildred was not Catholic, she was Lutheran. She had lived a somewhat turbulent life early on, and had her only two daughters (and my only two sisters) precede her in death. She lived her later life as the very best person she could be.

I wear the medal to honor her, but the truth is that I want her to know that she is in my heart and will always have a special place in my heart.

I believe that God is at work in the world today, and I choose to believe that my mother is as well. When I was a child, I was raised by my grandparents who taught me my prayers in German. When I said the words "In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost" I wondered how safe I might be.

Today we say the "Holy Spirit" and for years I wondered who or what was the Holy Spirit. Now I understand that the Holy Spirit is manifested in the love we show to one another.

The real heroes of our time are not the rich, the famous, the rock stars, or the professional athletes. The real heroes are the people who reach out to others with loving kindness.

It is an act very similar to integrity, it is what you do in the dark when no one is looking, and especially when you do it without personal gain or glory. My mother was one of those heroes.

After my mother died I flew back home to Washington and something amazing happened. When I returned to work, I felt her presence about me every day for two weeks. It was as if she was reaching out to comfort me.

It seemed as if by the grace of God she had been lifted up to do His work as a guardian angel here on Earth, and by the grace of God had been given a two-week gift to minister to anyone of her choice before she began her new life.

After 14 days I felt her leave, but I was overcome with the knowledge that God is indeed at work in the world through His minions of believers.

I was immediately reminded of my grandfather and namesake, Edward Louis Baker, a self-taught man of integrity, decency and honesty who lived his life as a happy man, secure in his final destiny.

May God continue to bless you, your father, and your family. You, your father, and your family are in my prayers.

Ed

April 22, 2007

Lessons in Life:

Kids Do Say the Darnedest Things, and Here Is My Favorite Fish Story

Kids say and do the darnedest things. They also learn lessons we would never think about. Here are some examples from The Forbes Book of Business Quotation:

An 8-year-old's discovery: I've learned that my daddy can say a lot of words that I can't.

A 14-year-old's discovery: I've learned that it's easier to stay out of trouble than to get out of trouble.

A 6-year-old's discovery: I've learned that when you put a June bug down a girl's dress, she goes crazy.

A 7-year-old's discovery: I've learned that you can't hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.

A 6-year-old's discovery: I've learned that if you spread the peas out on your plate, it looks like you ate more.

A 29-year-old's discovery: I've learned that people without children always know just how you should raise yours.

Here is my favorite fish story from the newsletter of the Rotary Club of Lancaster (TX), USA:

A third-grade class was learning about whales when the teacher related the story of Jonah and the whale. At the end of the story, the teacher explained that it would physically impossible for the whale to swallow a human being because whales have very small throats.

One little girl in the class said that because the story was in the Bible, she believed it was true.

"When I get to heaven," the little girl said, "I will ask Jonah."

The teacher asked, "What if Jonah went to that other place?"

The little girl replied, "Then you can ask him."

April 6, 2007

A Very Sad Day

Director Bob Clark of "A Christmas Story" and His Son Die in a Senseless Accident

I was so sorry to go online today and learn of the death of Bob Clark and his son in a senseless auto accident in Los Angeles.

Clark, 67, and his son Ariel Hanrath-Clark, 22, were driving in Pacific Palisades when their Infiniti collided head-on with a vehicle that a drunken driver steered into the wrong lane, according to police and the filmmaker's assistant.

The accident happened at approximately 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, about a half-hour after the bars closed. To add insult to a tragic, senseless act that took two lives, the driver of the out-of-control vehicle was not only under the influence of alcohol but was also driving without a license.

The 24-year-old driver of the vehicle remained hospitalized and will be booked for investigation of gross vehicular manslaughter after being treated.

My heartfelt condolences go out to Bob Clark's family and friends.

Bob Clark is best known for the holiday classic "A Christmas Story" which happens to be my all-time favorite movie. The film captures the Christmas wish of a 9-year-old boy who wants an official Red Ryder carbine-action model air rifle.

A Christmas story is told from the view of the Ralphie Parker, the boy in the story.

It is a sad day when anyone is killed by a drunken driver, but even more so when someone as creative as Bob Clark is taken from us. I can write no more on this.

Following is my original movie review of A Christmas Story. I publish it as a tribute to Bob Clark, his family, and those who knew him and loved his work.

December 25, 2006

Movie Review:

One of the Best Movies Ever Tells of a Boy's Perfect Christmas Gift

A Christmas Story – 4 Stars (Excellent)

A Christmas Story is arguably the best Christmas movie ever.

There is no doubt that the 1984 version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge is a worthy contender for the honor. Since I have not seen Fanny & Alexander (1983), I remain a huge fan of A Christmas Story.

Can there be anything greater than Santa coming to your house on Christmas Eve with the perfect gift of your choice? I think not, especially if it is a genuine Red Ryder 200-Shot, Carbine-Action BB Gun for a 9-year-old named Ralphie living in Northern Indiana in the 1940s.

Imagine Ralphie's dismay when his mother, his teacher at Warren G. Harding Elementary School and ultimately even Santa Claus at Higby's Department Store tell him "you'll shoot your eye out."

A Christmas Story is about much more than whether Ralphie gets the Red Ryder BB Gun he covets. It is about a Midwest family with two boys, Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) and Randy (Ian Petrella), who encounter the normal struggles of growing up.

Ralphie and his friend Schwartz (R. D. Robb) badger their friend Flick (Scott Schwartz, not to be confused with R. D. Robb who plays the role of Schwartz) into pressing his tongue against a steel post to see if it will stick.

Flick, who realizes that he might be wrong in saying his tongue will not stick, is left with no alternative when Schwartz whips a "triple dog dare" on him. To save face, Flick learns a very hard lesson and this film gets some great footage in the process.

Both the boys and the girls watching this drama unfold are horrified at the result and the boys have no problem abandoning Flick when the school bell rings. Flick is left frozen to the post. When their teacher Mrs. Shields (Tedde Moore) confronts them about who is responsible for Flick's condition, they clam up, realizing "it's always better not to get caught."

All of the boys also must deal with the terrifying Scut Farcas (Zack Ward) and Grover Dill (Yano Anaya), the schoolyard bullies. They get pummeled on a daily basis and act like cowards until Ralphie sees Santa at Higby's and gets another dose of "You'll shoot your eye out, kid."

Ralphie is so agitated with rejection over his Christmas wish that when he is next confronted by the bullies he flies into a fit of genuine rage, charging the much larger Scut knocking him down and pounding him repeatedly in the face. Scut ends up with a bloody face and 100 times the embarrassment of being beat up. This event would forever after be known as the Scut Farcas Affair.

I love A Christmas Story because the exact same thing happened to me growing up in the Midwest. I was small for my age and was constantly picked on by bullies until I learned how to fight back no matter what the odds.

When the Parker family goes out to buy their Christmas tree they encounter a flat tire on the way home. Mrs. Parker (Melinda Dillon) encourages Ralphie to help his father (Darren McGavin) fix the flat.

Ralphie manages to lose the lug nuts during the tire change, and, in fit of fright, utters the dreaded F-word to the shock of his parents. Mrs. Parker demands to know where he learned the word and Ralphie, desperate to come up with an acceptable choice shoots out a name of a friend.

Ralphie, of course, has heard his father cuss time and again, quoting that his father could "weave a tapestry of obscenities that is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan." When their furnace in the basement acts up, Ralphie says "my father dabbled in profanities like an artist dabbles in oils."

This cussing incident so resonates with me because I grew up in the same kind of environment. I often believed my stepfather had a 200-word vocabulary and at least 50 of those words were cuss words. I probably heard the F-word 10,000 times before I graduated from high school. I used to tell my friends I could speak 5 foreign languages if I got mad enough.

A Christmas Story is loaded with other real life events, including Ralphie's day-dream about being blind from having to suck on soap for cussing, his father winning a prize lamp shaped like a woman's leg that he displays in their living room window for all to see, and the secret decoder Ralphie gets by eating Ovaltine for breakfast.

There is also Aunt Clara's gift of a pink bunny costume that Ralphie is forced to model on Christmas morning, the neighbor's dogs getting into the house and eating their Christmas turkey, and the surprise on Christmas morning after all of the gifts are opened.

A Christmas Story is based on Jean Shepherd's book In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. Shepherd does a superb job of narrating this film about his childhood. The film is so well done, so authentic to its 1940s time period, so believable and likeable that it gets my excellent rating without qualification.

Director Bob Clark is uncanny in his ability to orchestrate this timeless story. Peter Billingsley is a 13-year-old actor playing the role of 9-year-old Ralphie and does so with incredible facial expressions. Young Billingsley is in the moment and totally professional.

A Christmas Story, a low budget film that was not expected to do well, was released just before Thanksgiving in 1983. By Christmas the film had been pulled from theaters because it was thought to have been "played out." It was only because of complaints from moviegoers that it was brought back to life.

The film celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2003 with release of a two-disc special edition. There are fans all over the world that treasure A Christmas Story and will not let it die, and I am one of them. I have lived so many parts of A Christmas Story that I feel it could also have been the story of thousands of other young boys growing up in the Midwest.

A Christmas Story is on my personal Top 10 all-time list of favorite movies because it exemplifies family values and the joy of living those few precious moments that define us for the rest of our lives.

A Christmas Story is an amazing film that teaches some of life’s great lessons, including determination, courage, patience, struggle, victory, self-esteem, love, acceptance and belonging. This is truly a classic movie that only those who have lived these experiences will appreciate the most. I am blessed to be one of those people.