Lessons Learned From My Father

As a young lad, I learned a lot from my father. Not everything was something he wanted me to learn, but that is how it usually goes with fathers. My parents owned a go-go bar (previously a strip club), so I actually learned quite a lot of stuff I probably shouldn't have known at such a tender young age.Yet, there were certain lessons my father tried to teach me that he felt I needed to know if I wanted to continue living on this Earth with minimal pain (or at all for that matter). Perhaps the most important lesson he tried to drum into my head, most important for my continued survival at least, and the one that I was most resistant to is this: pick your battles.I cannot count the number of times my father said those word to me, “Pick your battles.” Yes, you should stand up for what is right and follow your conscience and all that, but don't turn every little thing into World War III.It may seem like common sense to some. It is hard to express how important this lesson is for someone like me. Especially when I was young. As a boy, I was a serious nerd. I was prepared to explain in painfully unnecessary detail why “Doctor Who” was better than “Star Trek” and why Asimov was a more important writer than Hemingway. This was long before nerdism became cool. Back then, being a nerd was an invitation to get punched in the face by a bigger kid.All this was bad enough back in the brutal, chalkboard jungle of my school days. Unfortunately, I was also angry. A lot.Angry and nerdy. There is no more dangerous personality. Dangerous to myself, I mean. And there are no places more unfair to a kid than the playground at recess or the hallways between classes, where the random hierarchy rules.Schools were filled with soft, uncool kids, too sensitive for their own good. Most had sufficient survival skills to keep their heads down and show the proper deference to those kids who may have been only a couple inches taller, a few pounds bigger, only a bit more athletic, but to the downtrodden masses of intimidated children of Nebraska's public schools, they were muscular monoliths, anxious for any excuse to bring down a hairy-knuckled fist on the head of some quivering geek.Like I said, most kids had the needed survival skills to avoid a lopsided confrontation with a schoolyard bully. But not me. That is not to say I was looking for a fight. Au contraire (which is the kind of thing a nerd would say), there was no one less likely to win in a fight, or even get through one without serious bloodshed, than me. The problem was, and to a certain extent still is, I struggled to hide my fury at unfairness. To me, there was no word more offensive than “unfair.”No matter how many times something unfair happened, whether it was to me or someone else, I couldn't hide my outrage. Some people wear their hearts on their sleeve. I wear my spleen. When a big kid bullies a littler kid, there is nothing that spurs them on like that plaintive whine, “No fair!”Long story short (I know, too late), I took a lot of abuse as a kid because I got angry about every little thing. My father saw it and tried to save me, but I was obstinate, as so many young folks are, especially about listening to their fathers.Pick your battles. My father was right, of course, but to young me, that sounded like just another way of saying, “Let the bad guys win.”“Just let it go,” were words guaranteed only to further inflame my outrage.Well, that was a long time ago. I am no longer the angry little boy I once was, nor the angry young man. I’m no longer even the angry but exhausted middle-aged man I was not all that long ago. I'm grumpy, but not really angry. It is difficult for even me to tell when my surliness is genuine and when it is just shtick. I am, if not overjoyed, at least relatively satisfied with my lot in life. I think my father would be pleased that I managed to make it this far without letting my temper get me into real trouble. But there is still time. Though I have mellowed with age, I still haven't learned to pick my battles.

Lady Jeffs Down Cougars

Two Fires Thursday

Related Articles

At Last, Dangerous Visions

Sentinels

Caveat Lector

Gage County Newsletter