Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 36

Eagle Scout service project ready to go

The weather Gods have cooperated and given me a sunny, 70-degree day tomorrow, which means I can complete my Eagle Scout project after waiting 36 years.

I’m very excited.

Town officials have been consulted.

Supplies are gathered.

Snacks and beverages will be offered to volunteers.

I’ve even arranged for an expert on gravestone cleaning to join me early in the morning to teach me the proper techniques for removing dirt, lichen, and other debris from headstones.

We want to do this job right.

It will be a great day — hopefully even better than the day I had planned when I was 17 years old.

If you’d like to join me, I’ll be at Center Cemetery in Newington, CT, at the corner of Main Street and Cedar Street, directly behind the Congregational Church, from 11:00 to 2:00 PM. Stop by for 15 minutes or three hours — to clean a headstone, clear debris, or simply say hello.

If you’re not familiar with the circumstances and reasons for this day:

Back in 1988, I was in the midst of completing my service project — the final step in becoming an Eagle Scout – when I went through a windshield during a head-on collision.

Datsun B-210 vs. Mercedes Benz.

While being transported to the hospital, my heart stopped beating, and I stopped breathing before two paramedics used CPR to restore my life.

It was no joke.

I was hospitalized for a week — including two surgeries on my legs (and a third years later) — and spent the next three months recovering from serious head, leg, and chest injuries. During that time, I turned 18 — the deadline for earning the rank of Eagle Scout.

I had aged out of the possibility of making my childhood dream come true during my recovery.

I was aware of this, of course, so I asked my parents to apply for a waiver, an exemption, or an extension that would allow me to recover and then complete my project.

They told me my request was denied.

For almost 25 years, I was angry with the Boy Scouts of America for denying me the opportunity to achieve my childhood dream. I still loved the organization that, in many ways, helped me become the man I am today and never waivered in my support for their good work. For a time, I served as an assistant Scoutmaster for a local Boy Scout troop, and today, Clara and Charlie are members of Scouting, but I could never understand why they would deny me the opportunity to earn the rank I had dreamed about for so long.

It really was my dream, too. Throughout my time in Scouting, I earned every merit badge I could find — well over the required number to earn the rank of Eagle. I quickly ascended the troop’s leadership ladder, moving from patrol leader to assistant senior patrol leader to senior patrol leader by the age of 14 — the highest level of leadership a boy could attain in a Scout troop. I could tie all the knots, swim all the strokes, pitch all the tents, and perform all the life-saving skills that my first aid merit badge demanded. I hiked for miles, built shelters using only twine and the natural elements, and spent hundreds of nights sleeping outdoors.

Scouting was my passion.

Then, a car accident derailed me from attaining my final goal.

For 25 years, I was angry about their decision, and then one day, just a couple of years ago, it hit me:

My parents never requested that waiver or extension.

Why would parents who had never spoken the word “college” to me, never attended a track meet to see me pole vault, never watched me compete in a marching band competition, and nearly missed my high school graduation make the effort required to ask the Boy Scouts of America for an extension.

Two years after this realization, while visiting my former Scoutmaster at a camp reunion, I asked him about it. He said he had no recollection of the request.

“That was a long time ago, so it’s possible, but I don’t remember one.”

Failing to earn the rank of Eagle Scout is one of the greatest disappointments of my life. I know it sounds silly, but when you dream of something for so long and work so hard to attain a goal, failing to make that dream a reality can be devastating.

Though it’s impossible to turn back the clock, and even though I suspect I will always feel disappointed for failing to achieve this goal, I decided to complete the service project I began as a boy to at least bring me some closure and perhaps help me feel a little better about my boyhood failure.

At last, I’m ready to go.

Learn, unlearn, and relearn

“The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

This is a quote I like a lot.

It’s attributed to Alvin Toffler from his 1970 book “Future Shock.”

It strikes me that many people being left behind today are suffering from this very problem.

As an industry pivots, a sector of the economy transforms, and technology changes the nature of work, some people make great efforts to keep pace and evolve, while others watch their economic value atrophy and their ability to leverage skill and time diminish.

As a result, many become increasingly angry with a world they no longer recognize and cannot compete in.

Being a lifelong learner—something teachers have always hoped for their students—is essential to remaining viable and productive in a rapidly changing world.

Researchers at MIT, for example, found that 60% of the jobs existing in 1940 no longer exist today.

Similarly, Dell Technologies predicts that 85% of the jobs in 2030 haven’t been invented yet.

If you’re not constantly learning, evolving, and reinventing, your value in the job market diminishes almost by the minute. Whether you’re developing skills in a new sector or refining and expanding your skills in your current field, stagnation is economic death.

Thirty years before the dawn of the new millennium — decades before the age of the internet and the digitization of the world—Alvin Toffler said, “The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

That was one prescient guy.

Sedaris was great. His limericks were not.

Elysha, some friends, and I saw David Sedaris perform last night at The Bushnell.

We’ve seen Sedaris perform before, and as we’ve come to expect, he was excellent.

I’ve read all of Sedaris’s books and listened to many of them, too. Last year, after I wrote to Sedaris, he wrote back to me.

It was quite exciting.

I adore the man.

But one portion of last night’s reading left me uninspired. Early in the evening, Sedaris read a series of limericks he’d written for an event in New York City.

I don’t love limericks.

In fact, I typically hate them for a few reasons:

First, they tend to be laden with puns, and boy, do I despise a pun. Puns are the lowest form of a joke — a pathetic attempt to make people laugh via a play on words.

There’s nothing insightful about a pun. No attempt to make me see the world in a new way or think a little differently. Nothing about a pun reveals a hidden truth I’ve never before realized or offers me a glimpse into a life unlike mine.

A pun is just an attempt to surprise me by making a word represent a different.

Bah.

But equally annoying, limericks have a consistent rhyming structure, meaning that if you’re paying attention and can think ahead, you can often predict the essence of the last line, as I did with many of Sedaris’s puns last night.

I couldn’t tell you his last lines with precision, but I knew the limerick’s final word and, therefore, the essence of that final line.

If the first two lines of the limerick end with the words “stick” and “trick,” I’m pretty sure I know where the limerick is going, particularly because of the third reason I don’t like puns:

They are often dirty.

In fact, Sedaris said that limericks were supposed to be dirty, and his limericks were especially filthy.

I’m not a fan of most dirty jokes because they tend to circle the same drain that a million jokes have already circled, making their concepts trite and unoriginal.

They are also rarely repeatable in mixed company.

Sedaris recited some filthy limericks last night, and he could do so because he was onstage with a microphone, reading his work. I suspect many people in the audience, including Elysha and my friends, didn’t like the limericks very much, but Sedaris didn’t risk offending us because it was a performance.

He can get away with a lot when you’re standing in front of an audience, attempting to entertain them. A lot of leeway is offered, and risk-taking — within reason — is often welcomed.

Sedaris wasn’t reciting his limericks at a dinner party, on the sidelines of a soccer game, or in line at Starbucks. I suspect he wouldn’t under those circumstances.

This places dirty jokes in the realm of the performer and people who aren’t worried about walking through life, offending vast swaths of people.

I don’t love this about limericks, either.

But other than the five minutes of puns, I loved the show. Brilliant as always.

And admittedly, as much as I didn’t like the limericks, the audience laughed after each one, and when it comes to comedy, the audience tells you if you’re winning.

If they aren’t laughing, you aren’t funny.

If they are roaring with laughter, you’re doing something right.

Despite my feelings about the limericks, Sedaris was winning last night as he was reading them.

Sadly, there’s no accounting for taste.

Duke Ellington’s wisdom

Duke Ellington once said, “I don’t need more time; I need a deadline.”

If you make things, you almost certainly understand this.

Job vs. real life

One of my clients sent me a fascinating survey called the Culture Index Report. Answer a billion questions, and the results are remarkable. Not only did this survey accurately describe me, honing in on the things most pertinent to me, but it also suggests means by which I can negotiate the world more effectively and tells others how to best work with me.

If I were dating again, I would hand the survey results over on the first date and say, “Here. This is me. What do you think?”

It’s that accurate.

Elysha also took the survey, and her results were similarly descriptive.

Amongst the many surprising revelations in the survey was this:

I am constantly adjusting my behavior and approach to life when I’m at work to a degree I have never before seen.

This surprised me. If you asked my colleagues, I suspect they would say I don’t adjust my workplace behavior enough. In their minds, and mine, I am very much myself at work, which often causes friction, angst, and even discord at times.

But as much as that may be true, my colleagues still do not get a full measure of who I am, at least according to this survey.

It never occurred to me that the differences in my job behaviors profile and my survey traits profile — the difference between my behavior at work and the person I truly am — would indicate the need to behave differently in these settings, but of course, they would.

And yes, it’s true. I’ve had to adjust considerably over the years to meet the needs and expectations of the workplace, though I suspect that my jobs behavior survey — if answered specifically for the time I spend with students — would be similar to my survey traits profile.

Adults demand greater adjustment from me, whereas kids like me the way I am.

And that was an epiphany… right there. I’m typing this realization in real time. It’s a massive life-understanding realization:

Alongside family and my closest friends, my students know me best. I get to be myself in their presence. I remove all filters while teaching and am the most me I can possibly be.

Wow. It’s true. The person inside the classroom with my ten-year-old students is slightly different than the one who exits the classroom door and walks down the hallway to a meeting.

I’m certainly still myself in the presence of adults, but it’s a slightly muted version of me. A more accommodating, more malleable version of myself.

But my students get the concentrated version of me.

No wonder why leaving teaching often feels so impossible.

I’d be forced to leave my people. My little people. The people who know me best.

Get the right bench

Nothing makes me so simultaneously happy and sad as a memorial bench placed in a perfect spot by people who loved a person who is no more.

It’s a beautiful way to honor a loved one while also reminding us — or maybe just me — that a life has ended.

This one — located on a hill overlooking a field at Westmoor Park in West Hartford — is especially lovely because the plaque says so much:

In Loving Memory of Francis J Costello
For his love of city parks, good newspapers, and a well-placed bench

If you’re purchasing a memorial bench for someone, splurge a little and add a few extra words.

They really mean a lot.

The special sauce may be special, but who knows?

For my entire life, I have been ordering burgers from restaurants and asking them to hold their special sauce because — and I know this sounds obvious — I don’t know what is in their damn special sauce.

I don’t get it.

How are people ordering food with a sauce that’s only defined as special?

Not even a hint of what it might taste like?

No list of ingredients.

No indication of whether it’s spicy or sweet or anything in between?

The cheeseburger or chicken sandwich or pulled pork has a “special sauce,” and people just agree to blindly eat it, hoping that it doesn’t ruin the primary source of calories on their plate?

This makes no sense to me.

Are these mysterious special sauces so tasty that I have nothing to fear?

Is every special sauce really just as good as the next one?

Is it so special that its ingredients can simply remain a mystery?

This may be fine for most people, but I don’t get it. I care way too much about my burger to allow some random mystery sauce to be added.

No, thank you.

Women’s suffrage is tragically, stupidly not that old

While I was in Ottowa, I saw a fantastic memorial to women’s suffrage, which reminded me:

American women have only been allowed to vote for 104 years. Barely more than a single lifetime.

That’s crazy.

Human beings — and men in particular — were sexist and stupid for a very long time.

Many still are today.

Canadian women — for whom this memorial commemorates — have only been allowed to vote for 106 years. The same is true for British and German women.

Russian women have been voting for 105 years, though Russian elections are a sham today, so the extent to which their votes actually matter is questionable at best.

Brazilian women won the right to vote just 92 years ago.

French women have only been voting for the last 80 years.

Chinese women began voting 76 years ago, though the extent to which votes matter in China is also questionable.

Indian women have only been voting for 73 years.

Swiss women won the right to vote in federal elections just 53 years ago — the year I was born.

Saudi Arabia gave women the right to vote in 2015, though the country is effectively a patriarchal monarchy, so voting rights overall are minimal. However, women and men at least share the same limited rights to suffrage within the country.

The earliest attempts at female suffrage actually took place in New Jersey, of all places. The state experimented with women’s suffrage from 1776 to 1807 before finally abandoning it.

Finland in 1906 and Norway in 1913 were the first fully sovereign countries to enact female suffrage. Women in New Zealand began voting in 1896, but New Zealand was technically a territory of another country at the time and not a sovereign nation.

Women now have the right to vote in every country and territory in the world except for one:

Vatican City — the smallest nation in the world.

Female suffrage does not exist in the center of Christianity and the seat of Catholicism. The leader of Vatican City — the Pope —  is elected by Catholic Church cardinals, who must be male, so the women of Vatican City — approximately 32 in all — still live and work under an oppressive patriarchal regime for which they have no say.

Perhaps someday, the women of Vatican City will rise up against their 700 or so celibate, robed oppressors and demand a voice in their government.

It would make for a hell of a movie.

Never a good reason to do anything

Elysha and I walked halfway across the Golden Gate Bridge last weekend.

On the way back, I heard someone say:

“Not everyone can say they walked across the Golden Gate. Right?”

This annoyed me.

“Not everyone can say… ” is never a good reason to do anything.

We don’t do things to say we did things. Yes, we may eventually tell people that we did a thing — as I have done here — but you’ll never hear me rationalize a decision based upon the opportunity to say I did a thing at some point in the future.

Elysha and I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge because we wanted to. We thought it would be fun to stand high above the waters of San Fransisco Bay and take in the view.

You do something to experience it. Embrace it. Sear it into your mind as a lasting memory.

This is the reason to do something. .

Speaking about it after the fact can be lovely — especially if you tell the story well — but doing something to say it was done is dumb.

Don’t do things so you can brag about those doing things.

Do things because they are things you want to do.

Pens in doctor’s office

This is brilliant.

It’s also a damn tragedy that it needs to exist.

It should also be acknowledged that more than 99% of the time, the red pen is used by women.

But when the Republican candidate for President and former President openly boasts about sexual assault and a jury of his peers finds him liable for sexual assault, and yet a majority of his party still supports him, it shouldn’t be all that surprising that a system like this is required.

When a society  — or certain aspects of it — allows men to assault women, denigrates them for choosing not to have children, and strips away their bodily autonomy, systems like this need to exist.

When terrible men see other terrible men at the top of the food chain acting terribly without repercussions, they are permitted — and almost encouraged — to act upon their terrible instincts in terrible ways.

As a result, good people need to use black and red pens to try to save victims from further victimization.