We needed tough lessons as children. An occasional playground fight was expected as the norm, and if we complained to our mother that we were being teased, we were treated to this glorious aphorism: “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” My mom used to say that all the time, one of the seemingly endless adages she had at her disposal to deal with any of life’s problems. To this day I think long and hard about the practical application that dogma had on my life.
The idea that you could actually choose whether or not to be hurt by words: that was huge for me. Even though it has been repeated ad nauseam for generations, “sticks and stones” really is a powerful bit of philosophy to a kid. That’s one of the great things about being a parent: you can spout nothing but clichés, and yet, to your child, you come off as one of the great thinkers in Western culture.
–from MEAN DADS FOR A BETTER AMERICA, by Tom Shillue
You get to have a preview of the monologue . I’m just here in my office rehearsing.
Thank you for reminding me. I wanted to talk about our post-show hangout in Memphis and here it is:
Kettlebells… ‘Kettlebells?!?’
I’m an old hand at ‘Worshiping at the Temple of Steel and Iron’.
I’ve pushed around large stacks of weights on a semi-regular basis over the years. My longest streak was a little over 24 months.
I looked like a ‘Troll’, folks thought I was an NFL Lineman, or a Professional Wrestler.
That’s also most likely how I destroyed my hips. The one sure way I could ‘show off’ in the gym, is moving massive stacks of plates with my legs.
I know that, a ‘lifting program’ can ‘stall’, you have a tendency to perform the same lifts and movements repetitively. Your body adapts and you quit getting bigger and stronger. So you need to have a repertoire of different exercises and movements to ‘punish’ your body when it gets ‘lazy’.
I no longer try to move the maximum amount of weight possible. I don’t need to get huge, or to impress anyone anymore. I’m more interested now in ‘compound’ exercises. Ones that not only involve multiple muscles, but also ...
