No?

Signs of a Super Dad: The super dad laughs in the face of snow, rain and freezing temperatures. With proper preparation, nature’s wrath is playtime.


Let me start off by saying the Pittsburgh Steelers have made it to the Super Bowl after beating the crap out of their hated rivals the Baltimore Ravens. To say the game was brutal is a gross understatement. I have never seen so many players who got knocked unconscious. People around this area are going nuts and it is awesome. I truly hope they win the Super Bowl. I will never forget in 2005 when people flooded the streets in single digit temperatures after the Steelers won the Super Bowl. We drove down the streets in a driving snow storm giving high fives to strangers. It was beautiful. So Steelers mania is my excuse for not posting lately, and not because I have been playing video games with my AWESOME new Christmas toys. Now to this week’s topic.

Do you have trouble saying no? I think many have an issue with telling friends, family and to a point even strangers no. I know I do sometimes. It is like you want to be nice because they are a friend or loved one, but in the long run you know deep inside you really should have just said no. It’s as if we worry too much about hurting another’s feelings. That by telling them no we risk harming or even ending the relationship, even though realistically that would never happen. Or even the complete stranger who asks for your help that clearly should be doing it themselves. You know they are just taking advantage of you but you do it anyways.

We stretch ourselves so thinly already, with kids, work, or school just to add further stress by agreeing to things that you clearly know is a bad idea. Some people even go as far as letting people walk all over them because they just cannot say no. Not to mention the down right evil things that occur because the inability to give a strong no! Do we fear that by saying no we are a bad person? Do we fear saying no because we do not want others to see us in a bad light?

Saying no doesn’t mean you’re selfish, callous, or evil. It’s the ability to know your limits. To know you only have so much to give and it is your responsibility to be able to set your priorities. If you spread yourself too thin you’re not only harming yourself but the others you wish to help. Being stressed out of your mind because you have too much on your plate doesn’t help anyone; it just reduces your effectiveness across the board. A person needs to be able to understand when enough is enough and not feel guilty about communicating that. This is pretty clear cut yet many of us still cannot say no. So the next question becomes why?

I think for a lot of people it’s the fear of confrontation. We rather keep our feelings bottled up inside instead of getting into an argument. We fear the uncomfortable feelings that confrontation brings. I believe this is a direct result of how our society has molded parenting techniques over the past couple of decades. Many of us are brought up in households that strive to teach us that anger is bad. That we should teach our kids not to say no and just agree with whatever we tell them. The parent is the boss and the kid needs to listen. That if the kids do not agree they will get into trouble. Being raised in such a fashion, it is no wonder many of us have problems with confrontation.

And yet, kids need to listen to their parents. Without guidelines or rules children cannot become functional adults. Kids need to know not to run into the street or pull that pan off the stove, no ifs, ands or buts. So how do we reach a happy medium? How do we teach our children to listen and yet be confidant enough to make a stand? To become an adult who can say no. Well first off, I have discussed previously my view of the importance of confidence and self-esteem, and they play a large part in being about to stand up for yourself. So that is a given. But, I think that isn’t everything. You can still have good self-esteem and fear confrontation.

I don’t really have a clear cut answer and that kind of makes me sad. I want to know the exact answer to pass onto my children and not merely speculate only finding out if you are correct at the end. But really if you think about it, isn’t it like that for everything your trying to teach them? Anyway, that is a whole post in itself. I haven’t decided how I am going to teach this to my kids. Perhaps some studying is in order. Any ideas from you readers would be helpful.

Thanks for reading.

Anarchy in the USA?

Signs of a super dad: A super dad dances with his kids every day.

Over the weekend my best friend showed up for a surprise visit. We went out to the local upscale bar. I had my water and he had an 8 dollar glass of Korsendonk(sp?) Winter Ale. (Eight dollars seems like a lot but according to my wife Korsendonk (sp?)Ale from Belgium is the best beer in the world.) Anyway, my buddy and I sat around for a couple of hours discussing a range of topics from making fun of a guy wearing pink pants to a deep philosophical discussion of the meaning of death. We don’t go out much but I always deeply enjoy it when we do.

I am bringing this up because over that night’s conversation my buddy said something extremely interesting. We were discussing how he enjoyed reading this blog and a question relating to an earlier post popped into my head. I asked him if anarchy was ever possible. His point of view is that humans want to be led. They will naturally gravitate towards some form of organized government. He came up with a simple example: Garbage collection. Think about it, how long would it take for riots to break out if garbage collection stopped across the nation? If no one did any organization to clean it up. What would happen if our garbage just started to pile up? How the burbs would go ballistic with piles of garbage laying around on their yards stinking up their houses? People would probably just start burning it; filling our cities and suburbs with black, toxic, choking smoke. Would you just bury it in the back yard? Well I don’t have a back yard. Let us not forget the diseases that would be spread if we wallowed in our own waste. It would take 6 months to a year before our country would choke to death on its own filth.

Of course this would never happen. We as a society would never let it. We would hire, appoint, and do whatever needs to be done so our garbage is taken away, but it does raise an interesting idea. How something we take for granted would destroy our civilization the moment it is gone. Roads? It’s pretty easy to see how things would shut down if we stopped taking care of roads. It would only take a winter or two before all the roads in the Northeast would be undrivable. Shipping would cease, commerce would end. Ever see the show Dirty Jobs on the Discovery channel? Just picture our society if people decided to stop doing some of those jobs. Its funny how many “little things” would bring down a civilization if they suddenly disappeared.

The things I have pointed out are easy to understand. What about the little things that aren’t so clear? Aren’t so easily seen? Twenty years ago few people believed or even knew what Global Warming was, but now it is a significant threat to our existence. Most people thought warmer temperatures were a good thing. Fifty years ago if you told someone our population would be in serious trouble because of being too fat they would have laughed in your face. Pretty pitiful eh? What seemly insignificant “thing” will we being worrying about 20 or 30 years from now? Something that now seems silly or stupid to worry about.

Things that seem just seem Science fiction. Cyborgs, for instance cyborgs. Robots that act and look human. Will we be seeing a significant population decline because of robot sex? That’s right, men and woman who don’t want to waste time on a real human and just buy their perceived perfect mate. Seems pretty silly, but is it? As virtual reality technology increase will we start seeing people forgo their real lives? Living instead inside a machine? What new disorders revolving around virtual reality will be born? It’s hard to say what the next threat to humanity is going to be. But, I am sure it will be something we didn’t see coming. I am just looking forward to chatting with my buddy over a 20 dollar beer about how they just outlawed robot sex.