Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 349

31 lessons I teach my students that aren’t in the curriculum

Never, ever ask a woman if she is pregnant.

Old people look weird but have lots and lots of good stuff to say.

“I’m sorry. I made a mistake. I won’t do that again,” is always the best first response to any trouble you may be in.

The people who make their dreams come true are the people who work the hardest. Talent means little.

Good listeners are the most beloved people on the planet.

Fight with your feet. If someone hits you, run. You never know what that person might have in his or her pocket.

Never, ever download a videogame on your mobile phone.

Most people settle for a career rather than chasing their passion and end up living lives of quiet desperation. Promise yourself that you won’t let this happen to you.

Remember that almost every disaster will be meaningless in a year. Maybe a week. 

The unexpected thank you note is the best kind of thank you note.

The weird ones are the interesting ones.

Befriend people who are smarter than you.

Make sure that your bathing suit is securely fastened to your body before jumping off a diving board.

You care about what you look like. No one else does. Truly. 

Wear deodorant everyday.

Always record video with your mobile phone in the horizontal position.

Never, ever tell a person who asks you how to spell a word to look it up in the dictionary. There is no stupider way to find the spelling of a word.

Never, ever allow a person to sit alone in the cafeteria at lunch.

Don’t be “too cool” to sing, dance, or participate in gym class.  

If you learn to speak extemporaneously to an audience, you will have a skill that almost every other person on the planet does not.

Shakespeare isn’t as hard as people want you to believe.  

If you want something, fight for it in writing.

Always help your family with dinner. Cook, set the table, or clean up afterwards. Work for your food. 

Winners arrive on time. Losers are always unexpectedly stuck in traffic.

Any chore that takes two minutes or less should be done immediately. Dishes in the sink should never be a thing.

The single greatest thing you can do to guarantee your future success is to read a lot. Read more than everyone else.

Don’t ever expect life to be fair.

Complain less than the people around you. If possible, don’t complain at all.

Nothing good ever comes from watching reality television.

Drop mean friends instantly. There are too many people in this world to waste your time with a selfish jerk face.

Visit your former teachers often.

Three sentences that everyone should say more often

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I have many flaws. In fact, I list them annually. The 2014 list is 30 items long.

But here’s something in which I excel:

I say these three sentences often. I probably say each one of them more than once a day.

I’m sorry.
I was wrong.
I don’t know.

Perhaps it’s because I’m so flawed that I find it so easy to say these three sentences. A person who blunders as often as I do relies on these three sentences to get through the day.

But there is no clearer sign to me that someone is a confident, accomplished, self-possessed person than his or her ability to say these three sentences often and without reservation.

Sadly, a lot of people have a hard time with these three sentences. My life often seems filled with people who can’t say them or only say them disingenuously. 

I’ll never understand it. I can’t begin to imagine how difficult it must be to go through life having to be right or thinking that you’re always right or needing to give off the illusion that you’re always right when everyone around you knows it’s not true. 

I like standing on walls and big rocks, too.

But don’t we all?

 

“Spring is here!” roars these tiny, purple flowers.

My daughter found these emerging from the dead grass and stray leaves of the front yard.

 

She informs me that they are crocuses. It’s amazing what my kindergarten daughter teaches me on a regular basis.

Even though the weather forecast calls for three days of 40 degree temperatures and rain, it would appear that spring has finally sprung.

After the long, hard winter, I can’t believe how good these tiny, purple flowers look. They look so goddamn good and brave.

I want to be Jimmy Fallon

My friend, Bengi, used to play a game with me wherein he’d try to find someone in the world who I would rather be than me.

We were 19 at the time, living off elbow macaroni and unable to afford to turn on the heat in the winter. I was managing a McDonald’s, driving a 1976 Chevy Malibu, and had no real  future, so you’d think that it wouldn’t be hard to find someone –anyone – who I would prefer to be than me, but no. He never did.

Twenty-five years later, I have found that person.

If I could, I would be Jimmy Fallon. In a heartbeat.

There are a million reasons for me to want to be Jimmy Fallon, but they all kind of look like this:

Changes to this website and blog are coming. Thoughts?

Sometime next week, this blog and my entire website will be migrating over to a new platform. I have built a new website and spent the last month duplicating content on the new site in addition to adding new material as well.

The look will be different, and the interface will hopefully be better, but the actual content will remain the same. The entire blog, for example, including all comments and images posted over the last six years, have already been embedded on the new site. Nothing will be lost. 

This change will also make it possible to launch our first podcast, as well as reach out to readers, writers, and storytellers for a variety of other reasons.

We’re excited.

If you would like to take a peek at the changes about to happen, I would love your feedback. You can take an early look at the nearly complete website – including the blog – by clicking here.

Legitimate complaints about the toilet

My daughter had a tantrum this weekend when told that she had to try to use the bathroom before leaving the house.

Amongst her complaints:

There’s nothing to do but sit there.
It’s not my favorite thing to do.
I don’t want to wash my hands because that’s not fun either.

Tough to argue with the logic.

I proposed that we place a book or two in the bathroom to keep her occupied while she is sitting there. She’s in kindergarten, but there are plenty of books that she can read.

Her response:

“Are you crazy? Read on the potty. That’s ridiculous.”

11 thoughts on yesterday’s TEDxBU event, including observations from the restrooms and my advice for future TED speakers.

A few observations from yesterday’s TEDxBU talk at Boston University.

1. I will never understand what possesses organizers like Ben Lawson and Salma Yehia to give up hundreds of hours of their time to pull off an event like this. I have spoken at four TEDx events in the past three years, and in each case, I am astounded by the level of coordination, leadership, and effort required. I am so happy that there are people like Salma and Ben who are willing to give of themselves and their time. They are better people than me.

2. I only accidentally went into the women’s restroom once yesterday, which was good for me.

3. TED events use hands-free, wireless microphones. I despise these microphones. They are unreliable and do not afford the speaker the level of nuance and modulation that a traditional microphone affords. My microphone was fine yesterday, but give me an old fashioned corded mic on a stand any day.  

4. Speaking of restrooms, an astounding number of young men did not wash their hands after using the restroom yesterday. Is this some kind of millennial thing?

5. Walking around with a TEDxBU speaker badge causes every person at Boston University to want to talk to you and assume that you are far more intelligent than you really are. I think I’m going to wear my speaker badge in public from now on.

6. As a TED talk veteran, many of the speakers asked me for advice. Since it was too late to give any input on the content of their talk, I gave them these three speaking tips:

Speak slowly.
A well placed pause is a beautiful thing. It allows the audience to digest your content and allows you to center yourself before proceeding. Don’t be afraid to just stop and breathe.
If your microphone does not sound perfect when you begin, stop and get your tech fixed before restarting. The audience will always accept a two minute delay in exchange for a speaker who sounds clear and strong.

7. If I was going to give my admittedly biased advice on the content of a successful TED talk, I would say the following:

Fewer PowerPoint slides are better. Make your talk so compelling that you do not require slides. If the projector fails and your PowerPoint is corrupted by the bird flu, you should still be able to present a compelling and engaging talk.
Fewer numbers are better. Use story instead of statistics. Contextualize.
Ask yourself this question: How much of this talk is story and how much is expository. Your story-to-expository ratio should be 2:1 at minimum.
By the end of your talk, your audience should know the people mentioned in your talk. They should know their names and personalities and wants and needs. Otherwise, why did you mention them at all?
Include humor. Make your audience laugh early. It will boost your confidence and make your audience believe that they are in safe hands.

8. I was asked by two people if I had a startup. I found this question very strange. My response:

“Yes. Four books and two children. Want to invest?”

Ironically, it was later pointed out by a friend that Speak Up is much closer to being a true startup than my books or children.

9. It’s a small, small world. I mentioned my former poetry professor, the late Hugh Ogden, in my talk as a teacher who changed my life. It turns out that one of the other speakers lived on the same street as Hugh as a child and knew him well.

10. I was identified by the organizers on their website as a teacher, writer, blogger, storyteller, minister, life coach, and DJ. The vast majority of the people who spoke to me were most interested in my career as a DJ – until they learned that I was a wedding DJ and not spinning records in a club.

11. This was the first time in a long time when I was not on stage in a t-shirt and hat. I didn’t like it. Still, I wore jeans and was the envy of two of my fellow speakers. 

Future CTfastrak spokespersons

Connecticut recently opened CTfastrak, a dedicated roadway for buses only with stations stretching from Hartford to New Britain.

The construction of this roadway and these stations has been going on for as long as my children have been alive, so we have spent many, many days watching construction vehicles moving earth and diffing holes.

CTfastrak opened last week, and for the first two weeks, rides are free. There is a station very near our home, so my wife took my son on a ride last week and sent me these photos.

They had so much fun that they went again yesterday with friends.

Based upon the photos, it would appear that they are applying to be spokespersons for the bus line.

     

It’s a shame when people pose as Christians and give Jesus a bad name.

A Walkerton, Indiana, pizza shop is the state’s first business to declare it will not service gay weddings after the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was signed into law last week.

“If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no,” Memories Pizza’s Crystal O’Connor told a local news station. “We are a Christian establishment.”

It’s astounding that a person could claim to be following the teachings of Jesus and believe that discrimination based upon sexual orientation is something he would support.

Recently Washington Post book critic Ron Charles tweeted this:

Seriously, how do you study the Gospels and conclude that Jesus wanted his followers to turn away people they disapprove of? #Indiana

I replied to Charles, offering a possible (and probable) explanation:

In all likelihood, there has been no study of the Gospels. At best, this pizza shop owner has probably listened to out-of-context selections of the Bible, read to her on Sundays by a person who is employed by an organization that discriminates based upon sexual orientation and demands that its employees teach this doctrine to their congregants.

This does not qualify as study. At best, it amounts to biased, second-hand browsing. At worst, it’s a form of indoctrination.

Study requires a careful examination of source materials. It requires an open mind and skepticism. It requires a person to ask difficult questions and give serious consideration to opposing views.

Not exactly the way that services are typically run on a Sunday.

I am not a religious person. I call myself a reluctant atheist. I have spent a great deal of time in Catholic and Protestant Churches and attended Sunday School and Vacation Bible School for years, but I simply could not find the faith required to believe. I desperately want to believe in a benevolent God and a glorious afterlife, but I have yet to be able to do so.

But I have read The Bible cover to cover three times – twice in college and once on my own – and based upon those careful readings, I can conclude that there is no way in hell that Jesus would supported the position taken by this pizza shop owner.

If the pizza shop owner actually sat down and read and studied The Bible from beginning to end, the message of Jesus becomes abundantly clear. I may not believe that Jesus was the son of God, but I think he was a brilliant philosopher and teacher whose belief in accepting all people regardless of their differences is clear and profound.

Jesus – without a doubt – would stand against any opposition to same-sex marriages.

Still, I suspect that Jesus would happily eat a pizza from Memories Pizza – especially if their pizza is good – because amongst the many things that Jesus espoused was his belief in both acceptance and forgiveness.

Crystal O’Connor may be wrong about her interpretation of The Bible, and her position on same-sex marriage may be bigoted, but that doesn’t mean that she shouldn’t be able to make a living. It doesn’t mean that she doesn’t make good pizza. I suspect that she is probably a good person – better than me – but misled by a church that picks and chooses its Scripture in order to support its own discriminatory positions.

Let’s be honest:

Any institution that places the text of Leviticus over the teachings of Jesus can hardly be called Christian.