Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 656
November 12, 2010
Spreading the McRib and other good news
Over the last week or so, I have been yearning for a McRib, which my local McDonald's is now offering for a limited time only.
Frightening words for a McRib lover, and I love the McRib, regardless of what McRib-bashers may say.
Two days ago, in between parent-teacher conferences, I finally ate my first McRib in more than ten years.
It wasn't as good as I remembered it to be.
IT WAS BETTER.
And since posting about my desire for a McRib and my attempts to convert my wife to the joys of this delicacy, I have convinced three other people to partake in its pleasure.
The verdict:
One person "Loved it!" and two said that is wasn't bad.
Converts! Its always gratifying to know that my belief system has improved the lives of others.
A similar, less barbeque-enhanced situation occurred earlier this week.
Based upon my previous brushes with death, which include two instances in which my heart and respiration stopped and another time when an unloaded shotgun was placed by my head while the trigger was pulled, I conduct my life by adhering to the following philosophy:
Since you could die at any moment, do not complete any assigned task until the last minute. Avoid spending your last hour on this planet finishing some mundane and soul-crushing chore that will do you no good once you are in the ground.
For the most part, I strictly adhere to this philosophy, consistently procrastinating on tasks that lack any appeal to me.
I also work well under pressure, and perhaps better under pressure, so this admittedly makes my philosophy easier to apply.
Not everyone thinks this policy is sane. A least a couple of my friends are constantly questioning this belief, challenging my compliance, and a few are downright annoyed by it at times.
I don't quite understand why. All I do is live life as if every day could be my last. It's a nice platitude that is repeated quite often, and it seems to make sense unless you actually attempt to live by it. Then you realize that in order to do so, you must also live on the precipice of deadlines, the constant awareness of mounting responsibilities and time slipping away and the danger that important tasks may go unfinished.
But this is the way I choose to live, despite the outrage that some feel about it.
But not all.
Over the weekend, one of colleagues and good friends was supposed to complete an important assignment that could impact the future of her teaching career. As she walked into my classroom this morning, I asked how her weekend went.
"Fine," she said.
I asked if she had spent most of the time working on her assignment, which is what I would have expected her to have done.
"Nope," she said. "I started it at 8:00 last night and finished around midnight "
"You saved it for the last minute?"
"Yup," she answered, beaming with pride. "And it all thanks to you. I thought about how you don't believe in doing things until the last minute in case you die. Since there was a chance that I might die this weekend, I decided to enjoy my two days off and waited until last night to get started. And you know what? It worked out just fine."
Just think: My first disciple.
I wonder if all great religious figures started out this way.
With a handful of McRibs and one believer.
November 11, 2010
Lessons from two years of parenting
I've been collecting a list of lessons that I have learned from my first two years of parenting. The list was getting long so I thought it was time to post it here. I may add, revise or edit the list in the future, perhaps in a couple months at the time of Clara's second birthday, and it may eventually become the framework for a book on the subject.
Either way, here is what I have so far.
1. The parent who assumes the tougher position in regards to expectations and discipline is almost always correct.
2. Writing to your child on a daily basis helps you better appreciate the moments with your little one and prevents you from wondering why times flies by so quickly.
3. Training your child to fall sleep on her own and sleep through the night takes about two weeks if done with tenacity, an iron will and an absolute adherence to the advice of experts. Oh, and the grudging acceptance that thunderstorms, nightmares and illness will upset the applecart from time to time.
4. You cannot take too many photographs of your baby.
5. Taking care of a baby in the first two years of life is not nearly as difficult as people want you to believe.
6. Telling parents that taking care of your child has been an easy and joyous experience will usually annoy them.
7. Changing a diaper is not a big deal and is never something worthy of whines or complaints.
8. A great majority of the people in the world who are raising children are not happy unless they have attempted to demoralize you with their assurances that parenting will not be easy.
9. Experienced parents who are positive, optimistic and encouraging to the parents of newborns are difficult to come by and should be treasured when found.
10. Experienced parents always know which toys are best.
11. Unsolicited advice from experienced parents should always be received with appreciation. It should not be viewed as a criticism or indictment of your own parenting skills and can be easily ignored if need be.
12. There is absolutely no reason for a child under eighteen months old to be watching television on a daily basis.
13. Consignment shops are some of the best places to find children's clothing if your wife has excellent taste.
14. Parents seeking the most fashionable or trendy stroller, diaper bag, and similar accoutrement are often saddled with the least practical option.
15. Little boys and little girls are entirely different animals. They have almost nothing in common, and it is a miracle that they might one day marry each other.
16. The ratio of happy times to difficult times in the first two years of your child's life is about a billion to one.
17. Parents have a tragic tendency to forget the billion and accentuate the one.
November 10, 2010
My way is the right way.
Sometimes the correct pronunciation is still the wrong pronunciation.
Two words in particular:
macabre, which can be pronounced muh-kah-bruh or muh-kahb, should never be pronounced muh-kab-bruh. It sounds clunky and stupid.
Neanderthal, which scientists now pronounce nee-an-der-tawl (absent the th blend) and sound uptight and pretentious in doing so. It should be pronounced nee-an-der-thawl, as all school children were once taught.
Three or more jobs
Whenever I play golf, I find myself meeting new people and having to answer the question, "What do you do for a living?"
This is tricky for me. I often think of myself as having at least three jobs.
My answer should probably be teacher, which is my "day job," but as a friend pointed out the other day, I've already published two novels and make just as much money writing as I do teaching, if not more. And I write year-round, whereas teaching takes a break for the summer.
And though teaching is the activity that occupies the most amount of my time, I've actually been a DJ for longer than I've been teaching. My teaching career began in 1999 but I launched my DJ company in 1997. In terms of pure longevity and experience, DJ trumps all of my other jobs.
Most important, I take all three jobs equally seriously. The importance of teaching is obvious, but as a DJ, brides and grooms count on me to make their biggest day perfect. It's a lot of pressure and I take the work extremely seriously. And as a writer, I know that each sentence that I write will one day appear in print, unchangeable and immutable, so I'd better like them all.
No job plays second fiddle to the other. They are all important.
In CHICKEN SHACK, my unpublished manuscript (and probably my fourth book), the protagonist (Wyatt) is a restaurant owner, a writer and a teacher. When I wrote the first draft, I thought nothing of him having three jobs. It seemed perfectly normal to me. As I think about revising the book, I find myself wondering if I need to simply Wyatt's life a bit. While I can certainly understand how Wyatt might juggle these three different careers, will my readers understand? Will they buy it?
I'm not sure.
The last time I played golf was the same day that I was marrying a couple in my capacity as minister (my often forgotten fourth job), and when the midst of conversation, I mentioned the ceremony to one of my friends.
"Oh. You're a minister?" another guy (not my friend but someone who filled out our foursome) asked.
"Kind of," I said. It's just a part-time gig, and I'm not actually religious. I'm really a teacher and an author."
"Then why did you become a minister?" he asked.
"Oh, well actually I'm a wedding DJ, too, so I became a minister so I could marry my clients."
"You're a DJ too?" the guy asked. He looked like he had just stepped out of a washing machine. I had just thrown four occupations at him in the span on thirty seconds.
See what I mean? Awkward.
Making it more difficult, everyone else seems to have just one job.
"I'm a IT guy"
"I'm a sales rep."
"I install kitchen countertops."
"I'm a elementary school teacher, and I'm an author, and I own a DJ company, too. And occasionally I am a minister and I am attempting to launch a new company with a friend and become a life coach."
See what I mean?
November 9, 2010
Perverse political pleasure
It's a pleasant reminder of how well things worked out for my team.
And a reminder of money wasted by the bad guy.
Rhetorical blunder
I said it a week ago when I saw this ad for the first time (and foolishly failed to record my prescience here):
In the age of the mash-up, there is no room for rhetorical questions in advertising. You're just asking for trouble.
Stupid move, Nike.
Great move, Cleveland.
November 8, 2010
This is insane
I'm not sure which one of these is more impressive:
This is simply insane
I'm not sure which of these is more impressive.
How is this possible?
Only in middle school…
How did you decide upon your occupation?
I am, among other things, a teacher and an author.
As a child, I wanted to be a teacher and an author, so things worked out well. My childhood dreams were fulfilled.
It was not an easy road, and not the one that I had once envisioned.
I wish that I could have attended college immediately after high school, and I wish that when I finally made it to college, I didn't have to work a fulltime job and launch a small business simultaneously just to make ends meet, but I managed to survive and graduate at the top of my class. I missed out on some of the extracurricular joys of college, but I would not be a teacher and an author today without the sacrifices that I made.
I am fascinated by people's choices of occupations. In listening to a gastroenterologist discuss colonoscopies this weekend, and I couldn't help but wonder how someone becomes a gastroenterologist.
The guy might have wanted to be a doctor growing up, but a gastroenterologist? I doubt it.
How many people become the people that they want to be as children?
How many give up on that childhood dream, settling for something more easily attained? More profitable? More realistic?
How many people realize that their childhood dream is not as appealing as they had once imagined and change course, replacing the old dream with a new one? As a teenager, I found myself pondering the idea of becoming a lawyer in addition to an author and a teacher, and later in life, I looked into this option, taking the LSATs and doing very well but ultimately determining that the law was not for me.
But I still had my primary childhood dreams fulfilled. How many people abandon those dreams and regret their decision for the rest of their lives?
And how do people ultimately decide upon a profession?
My wife became a teacher, for example, because her father suggested that she would be a good one, and she is. But in her case, the entire course of her life was changed by the recommendation of a parent.
I have a friend who became a computer programmer (his childhood dream) but later abandoned it and became a math teacher after suffering through discovering the uncertainty of the job market and realizing (in part because of his friendship with me) that he was better suited to teaching kids than fiddling with computers.
Had we not been friends, what might he be doing today?
I have many, many projects on my list for the future, and one is to spend a year collecting the stories of how people landed in their occupations. There are so few jobs that children actually dream about having some day, and yet somehow we end up with more than enough gastroenterologists and paralegals and air traffic controllers and podiatrists and investment bankers and truck drivers.
Certainly more than were ever dreamed about in childhood.
How does this happen? How much of a role does chance play? How many decisions are influenced by the advice of others?
And how many people ultimately realize their childhood dreams?
If you have the time and the inclination, I would love it if you shared your story in the comments here.
November 7, 2010
For the sake of brevity
Fans of the NPR radio show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me (and grammar nerds), please explain this:
When Carl Castle is asked how many points a contestant needs to win, he says, "She needs five points to tie, six points to win outright."
My question:
Why outright?
Why not just "five points to tie, six points to win"?
It's a small thing, but it irritates me so very much.
