Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 476

The essence of New England weather

    

Less than 48 hours later:

 

Snooze button sucks

I have always been anti-snooze button.

There is no better way to waste time than to remain in bed after you have awoken. People waste hundreds, if not thousands of hours, a year doing this. If you’re going to be awake, you might as well start your day.

The snooze button is a contributor to this problem, and according to science, you should not be using it. Ever.  

Worst super power ever

It turns out that I write about my super powers quite often.

First there was a post about my actual super hero persona: Mr. Indestructible.

I cannot be killed (having been brought back from death twice already) nor have I ever bruised, and I have not vomited since 1983, yet I tend to be hurt all the time. Golfer’s elbow. Bad knees. Separated shoulders. Frequent concussions.

Strength and weakness tied together. The classic superhero motif.

Then there were posts about some of my lesser super powers:

My ability to wake up in the middle of the night and accurately state the time within fifteen minutes of the actual time, and oftentimes much more accurately than that.

My ability to hold my breath underwater for an exceedingly long time.

My ability to sleep very little, fall asleep almost instantly and sleep almost anywhere, regardless of the discomfort associated with the location.

For a short period of time, I actually tried to bring a few of my friends together with similarly questionable super powers in order to form a band of super heroes.

At the time, I thought that if Elysha had wanted to join our team, she might use her ability to identify any song after listening to it for three seconds or less as her super power, but it turns out that she has a more legitimate and equally useless super power:

Her sense of smell is superior to any human being on the planet.

Unfortunately, this is the worst of the five senses to possess in super quantities. As far as I can  tell, this super power only allows her to smell the dog or similarly distasteful scents when no one else can.

Unless your sense of smell is superior enough to sniff out the chemical components of a bomb at an airport, a super sense of smell is an atrocious power to have.

It prevents you from sitting in the train car with the restroom.

It causes you to smell the dead skunk on the road for considerably longer than anyone else in the car.

And yes, it allows you to smell the dog when no one in the house can smell her unless she is in your lap.

On a positive note, her super power fits the classic motif of combining a super power with an associated weakness.

Now all I need is a name for her super heroine persona and she can be on the team. Suggestions? 

A question about female criticism that is likely to get me killed.

I am only asking, so please don’t kill me.

There seems to be an enormous amount of angry, female criticism of Sheryl Sandberg’s LEAN IN on the Internet. Tweets, Facebook posts, blog posts, commenters.

I can’t help but think that if a man wrote a similar book suggesting that men engage in a paradigm shift at work, the typical male critique would be something more like, “No, I disagree. That guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. That’s not for me.”

There’s nothing wrong with disagreeing with Sandberg’s premise (I have yet to read the book, so I have no opinion), but the criticism coming from women strikes me as so angry and outraged.

Can you disagree with the woman without simultaneously attempting to tear her down by disparaging her career, her wealth and her parenting choices ?

Again, I’m only asking. Perhaps my perception of the situation is entirely wrong.

I’m sure you’ll tell me if it is.

He’s nine months old!

       

Mystery of Prince Rupert’s Drop

This is the most fascinating six minutes of video on the Internet today.

That is all.

Unprecedented sibling love (and the people who suck at life who want to spoil it)

I don’t think I have ever seen as much sibling love and affection as exists between my two kids.

Parents of children older than mine are fond of telling me that this moment of bliss won’t last. Sibling love will eventually give way to sibling rivalry.

While this may be true, you have to truly suck at life to say something like this to a father who is beaming over the love that is shared between his two kids. In fact, I can’t begin to imagine the degree of suckitude that one must possess in order to attempt to spoil a parent’s moment of joy.  

An interview with my not-so-fictional character

In case you didn’t know, Mrs. Gosk, the third grade teacher in MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND, is a real person. I’ve worked with her for the past fifteen years, and when I started my teaching career, she served as my mentor.

When it came time to choose the best teacher possible for Max and Budo, I couldn’t help but use Mrs. Gosk.

She is essentially a non-fictional character in a fictional story.

Mrs. Gosk and I recorded an interview that appears at the end of the audiobook, but in case you didn’t listen to the book and wanted to hear a small portion of the interview, it’s available here.

If you want to hear the interview in its entirety, you’ll have to buy the audiobook.

Be different. But be prepared to suffer, despite what parents and teachers may tell you.

While I think this book looks excellent, it also seems to embrace a fundamental flaw in the teaching of young people.

It’s an issue that I am slightly obsessed with.

We tell our children to be themselves. Be different. Blaze their own trail. Ignore peer pressure. Find their own style.

But unless those differences allow you to guide Santa’s sleigh on a foggy night (as is the case for Rudolph) or fly (as is the case for Dumbo), you are likely to lead a difficult life. People will punish you for being different. Nonconformity breeds contempt.

You may ultimately succeed, but it will never be as easy as your parents and teachers make it seem.

Nor will it be as easy as this book seems to imply.

Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend: Large print

Behold the large print cover for MEMOIRS OF AN IMAGINARY FRIEND.

Thoughts?