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
Yesterday’s video failed to upload. We’ll see how this one does.it was called “by the fire…with no fire”
Thank you for reminding me. I wanted to talk about our post-show hangout in Memphis and here it is:
“It’s been”
Nine years.
March 2017, I picked up my ‘little black truck’ from the dealer.
We sold our ‘palatial’ 7 acre VA estate 25 July 2017.
We then drove to Junction City Kansas, in my little black truck, to the manufacturer of the Big Blue Beast.
We pulled out on our adventure August 8th 2017.
We’ve 190,000 miles on my little black truck, more than half of those miles were pulling the Big Blue Beast.
What a long strange trip it’s been.
