John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 35

Saints Crossed the Line in “Bountygate”

Yesterday, the NFL handed out suspensions to players involved in the New Orleans Saints Bountygate scandal. Four players were suspended without pay, and one, LB Johnathan Vilma, is out for the entire season.

Vilma is upset and released a statement today where he said he never set out to intentionally hurt anyone.

He must have a different definition of “intentional” than the rest of us, because Vilma purportedly offered a $10,000 bounty to anyone who could knock Vikings QB Brett Favre out of the 2009 NFC Championship Game. Last time I checked, to knock someone out of a game, you have to hurt them.

A lot of players and fans have cried foul on the NFL for its discipline. Football is a violent game, they say, and we’re already paying guys to commit this sort of violence. Penalizing players, coaches, and teams for throwing some money in a kitty as incentive is, at best, disingenuous. (Not that I can imagine an NFL player or coach using the word, “disingenuous,” even the ones from Stanford.)

The thing is, though, there is a line. And I don’t care how much players and coaches try to deny it, everybody knows where it is. You don’t take cheap shots. You don’t play dirty. You give the guy your best legal shot and you move on. You don’ttryto hurt your opponent.

And that’s what the Saints did. They were trying to hurt the guys in the other uniforms. Moreover, they were celebrating doing it. That’s what the money was about. “You hurt that guy. Here’s a reward. Celebrate.”

And let’s get down to some hard facts. Off the football field, if you pay someone to hurt someone else, you go to jail. A $10,000 bounty on Brett Favre outside the stadium is known as a contract hit, and both the person paying it and the person executing it are guilty of felonies.

The league absolutely did the right thing by suspending the players involved, the coaches involved, and penalizing the Saints draft picks. Vilma and the others involved should consider themselves fortunate if the league doesn’t turn over its information to the Justice Department and ask for a criminal investigation.

Football is a violent game. Terrible accidents happen. Sometimes players recover, such as when then-Bengals QB Carson Palmer came back from having his ACL and MCL ruptured during a 2005 playoffs game. Sometimes the player doesn’t — such as the paralyzations of Dennis Byrd and Darryl Stingley.

But none of those cases was a deliberate attempt to hurt the player. They were unfortunate consequences of a violent game.

A $10,000 bounty to take out one of the highest-profile quarterbacks in the game during a conference championship is not only outside the spirit of the game; it’s criminal.

There’s a line. Everyone knows where it is. Even the Saints.

And they crossed it.

Proof You Need an Editor

If you need proof you need an editor, just take a look at my last blog post.

I found three typos when I read it this morning. I do not understand how this is possible.

After writing it yesterday, I proofed it and found several typos and other issues that needed correcting. I made the appropriate changes. Everything looked tip-top.

But there were apparently three errors I missed. It’s perhaps interesting that I note in that entry that I used to work as an editor.

Heh-heh.

I do not understand the science of this. If you read carefully, and you’re an experienced editor, how do you not catch these things? While we’re on the subject, why is it easier to see errors in print than on a computer screen? And why is it easy to spot errors after you’ve clicked, “Publish,” but not before?

I don’t know why this is; I only know that it is. No one can effectively edit themselves.

So if you’re playing the self-publishing game, do yourself a favor — get an editor. Pay for a good one. It makes a difference. Because if a guy who used to get a paycheck to catch errors in manuscripts can’t see three in a 650-blog (despite catching numerous others), it’s a good bet you’ll miss a few of your own.

Hopefully, when I read this blog tomorrow morning, I won’t find any typos.

A Sense of Relief: Finishing the First Draft

Well, it’s done. After what was an extremely herky-jerky writing process, I’ve finished the first draft of Red Dragon Five, the sequel to State of Grace. Typing, “The end,” caused me more a sense of relief than of satisfaction.

Writing a second book after publishing a first is a daunting enough task. No matter how good or bad your first one is, the second one will be scrutinized more closely. Has he grown as an author? Does this one look like it was churned out in a few months after the first one was carefully crafted for years?

Now throw in the difficulty of writing a sequel. Is it as good as the first book in the series? Do the characters change but still remain true to whom they were in the first? Does it advance the overall story arc? How much exposition about the characters or events from the previous novel is necessary?

All this was on my mind as I sat down to pen Wolf Dasher’s second adventure. It is a stand-alone adventure, but it is also a direct sequel toState of Grace. I tried to make it both self-contained and dependent on the first novel. That’s not an easy thing to pull off.

There was also the stress of tryng to write the second book while publishing the first. I began writing Red Dragon Five during NaNoWriMo, but I was also editing State of Grace at the time, so that I could get it published by Thanksgiving. Since the first book came out, I’ve spent a lot of my time promoting it, which also takes away from the writing time. This is where being an independent author really sucks.

And, naturally, there were the times where I got stuck trying to figure out what happens next. For the first time, I plotted a novel three chapters at a time instead of the whole book at once. That was a very successful technique (I should probably blog about that in the near future) that allowed me to be a little more organic in the creation of the novel. But it also meant I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was going to happen next. And I got stuck on the ending twice, especially since, as I wrote it, the ending changed from my original conception.

So it was with a tremendous sense of relief that I wrote the final sentences of Red Dragon Five. It was fun to write, but I am glad to be done with it.

Except, of course, that I’m nowhere near being done. The next step is to read it, and this is where I really cringe. I’m a big believer in just getting the first draft written — type it into the computer and get the thing finished. Don’t worry during the writing process how good it is. Finishing is more important than polishing at first.

But now it’s time to start the polishing process. This is where I’ll discover giant continuity holes, a shocking lack of detail in the descriptions, and general bad writing. this is where I’ll remember why you never publish your first draft.

Being an author is to swing on a pendulum of self-satisfaction and self-loathing. It’s immensely pleasing to get a book published, hear that others are reading it, and maybe even get a compliment or two. But a good writer is never really satisfied. The words could always be better. Going through this process will definitely inspire multiple thoughts of, “Oh, my god, did I really write that?”

But it’s okay. Writing is a craft. And I spent a number of years working as an editor. I like picking apart text and finding ways to make it better. I like looking for plot holes and inconsistencies and patching them up. I like shaping a story.

So I’m relieved the initial writing is done. Now the real work begins.

So much for that sense of relief.

Final Bengals Draft Thoughts

Time to close the book on the Bengals 2012 draft.

The team is getting rave reviews from the national pundits. Practically everyone is giving them an A or an A+. CBS’s Pete Prisco wrote that the Bengals had the best draft in the NFL.

I don’t pay close enough attention to know if that’s true or not. What I do know is this looks like a very good draft. Despite what I think of as the David DeCastro Incident, the first round netted two very fine players in Alabama CB Dre Kirkpatrick and Wisconsin G Kevin Zeitler. Penn State DT Devon Stills was a fine pickup in the second round, and the third round netted Rugers WR Mohamed Sanu and Clemson DT Brandon Thompson. I’m still not sure getting Thompson was worth giving up DeCastro, but I would be happy to have Mr. Thompson prove me wrong, especially if he can do it by pancaking Mr. DeCastro when we play the Steelers.

The third day brought the Bengals an interesting variety of players. The two most intriguing to me are fifth-rounder Cal WR Marvin Jones and sixth-rounder Ohio State RB Dan Herron. Both guys walk into situations where the competition for their respective positions are wide open.

Overall, the Bengals did a fine job of drafting 10 players who fill needs and, in theory, make the team better. It was a good draft.

If anything worries me it’s not taking a linebacker. After they traded away OLB Keith Rivers, they left themselves thin behind starter Thomas Howard. MLB Rey Maualuga expressed relief on the team’s official website that competition for him wasn’t drafted after he had a second brush with the law. He also struggled last year after getting injured. The starting unit looks fairly solid, but who’s behind them?

Still, Stills and Thompson upgrade the line, and Kirkpatrick improves the secondary. Perhaps that’s enough.

As the draft moves into history and the players and coaches look ahead to OTA’s, one thing noted by Bengals.com editor Geoff Hobson struck me. Cincinnati has endured a lot of criticism for bad drafts, but the real problem has been injury. 2004 first-round pick Chris Perry never recovered from a sports hernia that wiped out his rookie season. 2005 first-round pick David Pollack broke his neck the second game of his second season. 2008 second-rounder Kenny Irons blew out his knee on his third NFL carry. In 2009, first-rounder Keith Rivers broke his jaw halfway through his rookie season. Even 2003 first-overall selection Carson Palmer suffered a season-ending knee injury on the second play of his first playoffs game in 2005 and was lost for the season to an elbow injury after four games in 2008.

It’s tough for your drafts to be productive when the guys at the top get hurt and never develop into the kinds of players you envisioned when you took them so high.

By way of contrast, Cincinnati drafted four Pro Bowlers in 2010-11 — the most in the NFL according to ESPN. One gets the feeling Mike Brown and company do, in fact, know what they are doing when it comes to evaluating talent. It also raises yet another specter in an endless game of Bengals What-if’s.

What if Carson Palmer hadn’t blown out his knee in the playoffs game? Would the Bengals have cruised to the Super Bowl like the Steelers did?
What if Chris Perry had become the dynamic change-of-pace back and receiving threat he showed flashes of being the few times he was healthy?
What if David Pollack became one of the premier pass rushers in the NFL like he was showing signs of becoming?
What if Keith Rivers had become the latest example of USC linebackers doing #55 proud in the NFL?

The Bengals had a good draft this past weekend. It’ll take three years to know how good, but here’s toasting both the decisions in this draft and the health of the players selected for a long time to come.

Bengals’ Second Day Makes First Look First-Rate

This is the problem with making immediate judgments. You don’t have the benefit of time and reflection.

Last night, I panned the Cincinnati Bengals’ performance in the first round of the NFL Draft. I felt trading back to 27 from 21, thereby allowing Pittsburgh to take Stanford G David DeCastro and then settling for Wisconsin G Kevin Zeitler was a huge misplay. Moreover, while I thought picking Alabama CB Dre Kirkpatrick was a good decision, I thought they should have waited to get him until 21 instead of taking him at 17.

But that was before I saw what happened tonight. If there were no rounds after last night, my opinion might have been right. But tonight’s second and third rounds vindicated what the Bengals did in the first.

Very early in the second round there was a run on offensiive lineman. Starting with Cleveland with the fifth pick in the second, five o-linemen went in the next eight picks. With DeCastro off the board last night, I wanted the Bengals to at least use the 27th pick on Georgia Tech WR Stephen Hill, whom I knew would be gone before the Bengals picked again with the 53rd selection. Instead, they took Zeitler, infuriating me.

But that turned out to be wise. Cincinnati expects Zeitler to step in and start at right guard immediately. That was a hole that really needed filling, so it’s already a win. And the run on o-line early in the second meant Cincinnati could not have gotten a player nearly as good Zeitler if they’d waited.

That cost them Stephen Hill. But miraculously Rutgers WR Mohamed Sanu fell to the Bengals at 83 in the third round. He’s a guy that probably should have been drafted ahead of where he was.

And Hill being off the board freed Cincinnati up to take Penn State DT Devon Still — the Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year last season — in the second round. With the departures of Frostee Rucker and Jonathan Fanene in free agency, the Bengals needed to get a D-lineman. The best player in a tough conference sounds alright to me.

And let’s go back to the Dre Kirkpatrick pick. Cincinnati really coveted him. He was the last of what they considered to be three CB’s with first-round grades. When South Carolina’s Stephon Gilmore went off the board, the coaching staff started to sweat in the Cincinnati war room. They feared he would be gone before they were on the clock at 17. When he was there, they were taking no chances someone would nab him before 21.

That makes it a good pick. He was the guy they wanted. They didn’t screw around. They made sure they got him instead of gambling. Smart.

But there is still the question of whether the trade with the Patriots was a good one. It cost them David DeCastro. That means it comes down to whether that extra player (pick #93) was worth it.

Cincinnati selected Clemson DT Brandon Thompson. Once again, they addressed the situation on the offensive line. The knock on the guy is that he isn’t much of a pass rusher. However, he’s an incredibly disruptive force in the running game, and the Bengals use an eight-man rotation on d-line. In a division that features Ray Rice and now Trent Richardson, Thompson seems like a good pick, especially for first down.

So 24 hours later, my opinion of the Bengals’ first round is much different, and I have pretty high regard for what they did on the draft’s second night. So far, Cincinnati apppears to be having a very good draft.

It just goes to show you. Time and reflection are valuable tools.

First-Round Flub

It’s too early too early to give the Bengals a grade on their 2012 draft, but let me say this about their work in the first round tonight:

Ugh.

For the first time since 1998, Cincinnati had two picks in the first round. They had no glaring needs. They could take the best player available at selections #17 and #21. It was next to impossible to mess it up.

But the Bengals found a way.

The key to this being a bad night for Bengals fans was the 21st pick. The Bengals traded back to 27 to allow the Patriots to take DE Chandler Jones. Stanford G David DeCastro was still on the board. Cincinnati’s interior line needs shoring up.

And so did the Pittsburgh Steelers’. Cincy’s archrival — one of the teams they are always looking up at – has an o-line with holes all over it. So, instead of taking the best guard in the draft, the Bengals allowed the Steelers to do that. Congratulations. We let a guy we wanted go to Pittsburgh. That guy will be getting in Carlos Dunlap’s and Geno Atkins’ way for the next 10 years instead of protecting Andy Dalton.

So when the Bengals came up on the clock at 27, whom did they choose? Wisconsin G Kevin Zeitler. After the Bengals let the best guard in the draft go to Pittsburgh, they settled for the consolation prize of the third-best guard . . . when the second best guard, Cordy Glenn, was still on the board!

They also passed on Georgia Tech WR Stephen Hill — a guy who can help take pressure off AJ Green — who will not be there when the Bengals pick again at 53 in the second round.

Now, Cincinnati did get a great player in Alabama CB Dre Kirkpatrick at 17. They needed another CB, and he is regarded as the best tackling CB in the draft. That was a good choice.

But virtually every mock draft had Kirkpatrick available at 21. So most likely the Bengals could have had DeCastro at 17 and Kirkpatrick at 21. More importantly, the Steelers wouldn’t have DeCastro.

The Bengals got the Patriots third round pick (#90) in the deal. Zeitler and the extra third round pick better be worth it.

Because this looks like a botched opportunity.

NFL Draft is all about One Thing: Hope

It’s almost here.

OMG, it’s almost here! The NFL Draft is tomorrow!

Nothing says, “Hope,” like the draft. Every guy in the first round is a certain Hall-of-Famer, even though he hasn’t played a down of pro ball. Fans of every downtrodden team believe the draft is going to fix all their problems, and the fans of the successful teams just know the draft will allow them to continue to dominate.

For a Bengals fan, the NFL Draft is a source of hope and fear. Yes, the Bengals have done well in the last three drafts, but they have also done incredibly stupid things. Who can forget not trading for the Saints entire draft so they could select Akili Smith — a QB they didn’t need, who never worked out. How about the 2005 Draft where they took two criminals in the second and third rounds?

And even when it does work out, there are the on-field disasters. Cincinnati traded up to get the draft’s first pick, RB Ki-Jana Carter, in 1995. He blew out his knee on his fourth NFL carry. Speaking of that lost 2005 draft, their first-round pick, LB David Pollack, broke his neck in the second game of his second season.

Yes, the draft strikes fear in the hearts of Bengals fans, but it is also great cause for hope. One need only look to last season, when Cincinnati got Pro Bowl WR AJ Green in the first round and Pro Bowl QB Andy Dalton in the second.

This year, the Bengals have two picks in the first round — a rare luxury. Better still, they have no obvious needs. Truly, they can pick the best player available, and they can do it twice in the first round!

So whom should they take? The better question is whom shouldn’t they? And there are two answers to that question. First and most obviously, they shouldn’t (and won’t) take a quarterback. Barring an injury, Andy Dalton is the franchise quarterback for the foreseeable future.

But some pundits have the Bengals taking CB Janoris Jenkins, because they need a replacement for Johnathan Joseph who left last year in free agency. I’m all for the Bengals taking a cornerback, but it better not be Jenkins. He’s got a history of off-field problems the Bengals just don’t need.

Beyond that, it’s hard to say what I want. It sort of depends on how the board falls. I’d love to get G David DeCastro to shore up the interior line, but half the mock drafts suggest he won’t be there. CB Stephon Gilmore would be sweet, but mocks have him going as high as #7 to the Jaguars. Or not.

As I see it, the Bengals need a guard, a cornerback, a safety, a linebacker, a running back, and a wide receiver. Based on what I’ve read, there should be two of those guys easily avilable.

So who would I like to see the Bengals draft? Any combination of G David DeCastro, CB Dre Kirkpatrick, CB Stephon Gilmore, DT Dontari Poe, WR Michael Floyd, WR Stephen Hill, or someone else who fits what we need well.

I’ll blog and live-tweet on the draft as it develops. You can follow me at @JohnRPhythyonJr.

It’s almost here. Hope is alive!

Hat-trick

I had never played soccer in my life.

I kicked a ball around with my daughter in the backyard a few times. In junior high, I played at recess a strange almagamation of soccer and football wherein you got to pick the ball up and run with it, and you could tackle the guy with the ball, but you had to kick the ball into the goal to score.

But the game that drives the rest of the world to riot and to stop working and watch the World Cup every four years was not in my repertoire. I can only name three soccer players total: Pele, Brandi Chastain, and David Beckham.

So the thought of my running around a field playing a vaguely organized game was, before Friday night, just short of laughable.

It’s funny how children change things.

The Girl wanted to go to Friday Soccer — the weekly event across the street at the schoolyard, where the neighborhood and a few parents play a pickup game. She had no interest in playing herself. One of her friends just usually attends, and they play on the playground.

Ordinarily, The Boy and I play Magic on Friday nights, but The Girlfriend is performing in Steel Magnolias right now, so she can’t be home to take care of The Girl. Naturally, it was proposed that The Boy play in the soccer game, since he’s an actual fan of the game.

“And what will I do?” I said, imagining myself sitting around with no one but my Kindle to keep me company.

“Could you play?” The Boy said suddenly.

His face was as bright as the desert sun at noon. There was more hope in his voice than can be found when the big lotto gets up over $100 million.

He used to play soccer with his dad. It was their thing. After his dad moved away, though, he all but quit playing. It made him too sad. He missed him too much, and soccer was the most painful reminder of what he lost.

When he asked me to step in and play with him, what could I say but yes?

So I put on my Cincinnati Bengals shorts and sweatshirt (I hear other people in the world call this sport football, so . . .), and we went to play soccer together.

It was not such a good game for me. I volunteered to play offense, because, knowing nothing about the game except how to score, I hadn’t the slightest idea how to play defense. But after less than five minutes, my 44-year-old lungs were not interested in chasing after the ball anymore, so I had to switch.

I soon discovered trying to stop someone who knows what they are doing with a soccer ball from going around you is harder than it looks. I got schooled by a 10-year-old girl. Twice.

After an hour, my legs were sore, my lungs were burning, I had a stitch in my side, and I discovered The Girl drank my water before running off to play with her friend.

But it wasn’t about me. It was about The Boy feeling whole in a way he hadn’t for years.

He likes playing Magic on Friday nights. He really likes it, in fact. And he likes going to superhero movies with me and attending theatre camps I teach. He likes having me in his life, learning about things that are important to me, and looking up to me.

But this was something of his that I shared instead of the other way around. This was a reminder of how life used to be and how good it felt. And it wasn’t sad. It was joyful. I made him happy.

I scored two goals in the game, but the third one — the one that gave me a hat-trick — came at the dinner table, when I said I would play in the first place.

That one was worth more points than Pele, Brandi Chastain, and David Beckham have scored combined.

No Deals: Vikings Quest for New Stadium Sums up Modern Politics

If you don’t follow Minnesota politics or the NFL very closely, you’re probably not aware of the ongoing battle between the Minnesota Vikings and the state legislature for a new stadium. The Vikings play in the 30-year-old Metrodome, which they and the league claim just isn’t sufficient in the modern NFL. Minnesota politicians going as far back as former governor Jesse Ventura have opposed the idea of public funding for a building that benefits a private enterprise.

Yesterday, things got more tense. After the Minnesota House rejected a $975 million stadium bill, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told Governor Mark Dayton not getting a new stadium would have “serious consequences.” Goodell neglected to define what those consequences would be, but it’s a fair bet he was suggesting the league ownership would approve the Vikings relocating.

The NFL would love that. The league has been lusting to get a team back to Los Angeles — the nation’s second largest television market — since the Rams and Raiders left in the mid-90′s. LA is already working on a stadium to land an NFL franchise, even though the city has yet to be promised one. The unspoken threat behind Goodell’s words is plain: “Los Angeles would be happy to have your team if you don’t want to play ball.”

It’s a disturbing concept — private enterprise dictating how public funds will be spent. Blackmailing the government into taxing people to build something for a private company. State Senator Roger Chamberlain, R-Lino Lakes, summed it up nicely when he wrote in an email, “It’s disappointing to think the NFL or the Vikings are driving policy for Minnesota government.”

This isn’t exactly new policy. Brewers owner Bud Selig told Milwaukee he would move the team if he didn’t get a new stadium. They built him one, despite the fact that Selig, as baseball’s commissioner, refuses to institute any sort of salary cap or profit sharing in baseball so that he could put a consistently competitive product on the field in one of the league’s smallest markets.

The late Art Modell moved the Browns to Baltimore when he got upset that Cleveland built the Indians a new stadium, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and several other civic improvements before getting around to building the Browns a new stadium.

No, sports teams and leagues have held local governments hostage before. Minnesota is just the latest victim.

And, as always, there’s another side to the story. The government benefits from having the team there. Millions of tax dollars are generated on ticket sales, food and beverage sales at the games, and merchandise sales around the state. Visiting teams put their players up in hotels that generate local revenue as well as hotel tax dollars. Those same teams need to eat and do at local restaurants as do fans who come to the games. A major sports franchise generates a lot of revenue.

Moreover, having state-of-the-art facilities helps draw better players in free agency, which theoretically leads to more competitive play. The better the team plays, the more tickets and hot dogs and beers and t-shirts get sold. Income tax is collected from the players and coaches and support personnel who draw their salaries from the team.

So it’s not like the state isn’t benefitting from having the Vikings around. They’ve been contributing to Minnesota’s bottom line for 52 years.

But if the situation in Minnesota demonstrates anything it is where we are in these modern political times. The only thing anyone wants to look at is the pricetag. Legislators see $975 million, and they start talking about government waste and debt burdens on our children. Businessmen look at a cash-strapped government and are only interested in securing their piece of the shrinking pie instead of figuring out how to grow it.

No one thinks about partnership — about how it is possible for people of disparate views to get together, hammer out a compromise, and acknowledge (even if it’s only behind the scenes when no one is looking) how much we need each other, how much we can help each other.

I don’t know what the right solution in Minnesota is, but I know that the legislature has spent more than a decade refusing to play ball with the Vikings, and the league’s patience for that is wearing thin. Legislators and the league need to sit down and hammer out a solution that benefits the Vikings and the people of Minnesota.

Because the Vikings are going to benefit. It’s just a question of whether they’ll do it in Minneapolis or Los Angeles.

Learning Disability

I am losing my faith in science.

My father — a Doctor of Biology — and my mother — a nurse — are probably shocked. They raised me to believe in examining evidence and using the Scientific Method to test and understand the universe.

But that’s just the problem, you see. I’ve been doing that, and I’m finding science not to measure up to its own standards.

It’s accepted scientific theory that children are wired to learn. You always hear about how you should teach your young children a foreign language, because their brains are much better apt to learning that sort of thing in elementary school than when they get to high school or college. The young mind questions how everything works. The teenage mind questions why he or she has to work.

But, frankly, my obsevations show little evidence to suggest young minds are wired to learn. There certainly doesn’t seem to be a lot of learning going on around my house.

The Boy has two bad habits. He leaves his dirty clothes in the bathroom. But he takes his towel with him and leaves it in a wet pile in his room. Thus, everyone has to look at his dirty underwear, and he doesn’t have a towel the next day for his shower and has to either ask someone to get him one or borrow someone else’s.

Apparently, standing there cold and wet without a towel every morning isn’t enough to teach him he should alter his behavior.

The Girl takes great exception when he “borrows” her towel, since he doesn’t ask permission and she wouldn’t give it if he did. He takes it anyway, and then she screams and throws a fit about him using her towel. So I yell at him not to use his sister’s towel. This does not seem to dissuade him.

Yesterday, he had to “borrow” his mother’s towel, because his towel and his sister’s were in a wet pile in his room. Naturally, he left his dirty clothes in the bathroom but took his mom’s towel without returning it. This despite being yelled at for leaving his clothes behind the two days before and his mother sternly telling him he wasn’t allowed to leave her towel in his room.

See what I mean? There is no learning going on here. Telling someone the same thing over and over again should cause even the dimmest person to learn it. The Boy learns nothing.

So I forbade him to watch his favorite TV show this week and made him put everyone’s towel back and clean up his dirty underwear. He was stunned — stunned! — that I could conceive such an inhuman punishment.

This morning, I found his dirty clothes on the bathroom floor and his sister’s towel in a wet heap next to them. So the question is: Did he really use his sister’s towel and not hang it up again less than 24 hours into his punishment for doing exactly that?

Or did The Girl leave her towel in a wet heap on the floor only hours after watching her brother get punished for doing the same thing?

More importantly, why isn’t anyone learning around here?

I thought perhaps it was that these two children just have learning disabilities, but I saw the same thing in my daughter when she was in elementary school. It was amazing how every week she was required to clean her room, and every week it was a three-hour, arduous chore, and every week she trashed it again anyway after getting it clean instead of just picking up after herself so that Saturday wouldn’t be horrible.

And before her, my friends children, whom I used to babysit, were constantly getting in trouble for getting up out of bed and other crimes they committed over and over again.

If children are wired to learn, how can this happen? How can they keep making the same mistake, even after suffering consequences for it?

Science is failing me. Either the Scientific Method of observe, record, and draw conclusions is flawed, or the scientists who posited children are wired to learn didn’t know what they were doing.

There’s a lesson here somewhere. There has to be, right?

But, just like the children, I have no idea what it is.