Advice for My Teenaged Boy

I once wrote about the advice I give my teenaged girl. It revolved around boys, because that was what she was so concerned with at the time.

When I think about the advice I give my boy at about the same age, I notice it’s not only about dating. And I wonder about how else my advice to him, as a mom giving advice to a boy, is different from my advice to her.

The dating advice:

Drama queens are not worth it.

Neither are girls who will do anything to have you as a boyfriend. I am constantly surprised by the girls, and frankly, women, I see being doormats to men and boys. It’s a sign something’s wrong with them.

And as I also tell my daughter: By all means, be kind to people who are troubled and struggling, but do not date them. They are not capable of having a healthy relationship and you deserve that.

Still, be kind. I was so pleased when my son, who handed out Hershey’s Kisses yesterday in celebration of Valentine’s Day, told me he gave them to every girl he came across. Too often, boys and men, because they are allowed to do it, appoint themselves judges of women’s worthiness. No.

The non-dating advice?

Girls and women are always told to be careful, to not wander around alone at night. But things like bullets and alcohol, which can leave you vulnerable (if not to rape, then to things like being mugged), work the same on boys as on girls. Even though you are big and strong, you need to be street-smart.

Because you are big and strong– and also have a teenager’s tendency to be loud and bouncy, take care not to intimidate people. Boys sometimes think this is funny; it’s not.

Up in the Air on Risk

For my birthday, my husband borrowed a small plane, hired a pilot and flew us to New Orleans for the weekend.

Very cool.

But we flew the same weekend a family (Dad (the pilot), Mom, three girls) crashed their small plane into the woods in Kentucky.

Only their youngest daughter, aged 7, survived, walking a mile through woods, at night, barefoot in winter temperatures, with a broken wrist, to knock on someone’s door. (In news reports, police officers, getting teary, say that if she had walked in any other direction that night, she might not have survived either.)

On our trip, our pilot told us there were some weather conditions he would be flying around, so the flight would be bumpy.  Regular, old turbulence is not dangerous, though it can feel so, especially in a small plane. You are in a minivan-sized vehicle, surrounded by windows. It feels like you are in a roller-coaster car that could fall off its invisible track at any moment.

Small-plane crashes are most often blamed on pilot error and inexperience. Our pilot, a professional, has thousands of hours of flight time, is certified every which way, including instrument-rated, meaning he can fly in weather conditions when he cannot see, and is a certified flight instructor. But according to news reports, the dad was an instruments-rated certified flight instructor, too.

And then there are all the psychological tricks my mind plays regarding risk. That little girl and her family are seared into my brain. And having our little plane buck like a horse felt dangerous even when I knew it wasn’t.

If we were ever truly aware of all risk, we’d never climb into a car or leave the house, let alone go on a trip for fun.

Eliminating risk is impossible; calculating it scary.

What to Do?

I’ve always had a thing for to-do lists.

My dad had to-do lists and my parents still laugh at how, when I was small, I wrote my own, starting with “Wake up,” which I then carefully checked off.

More recently, I went through a phase of reading about being more efficient. In Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen suggests putting everything – and he means everything – into the task list and calendar of Outlook. (Personally, I hate Outlook and don’t use it. Does it still have the charming habit of suddenly sending the email you are still writing?)

He’s right, though. If you put all those niggling things – call the plumber, buy those special lightbulbs – down somewhere, where you know you will see them, you can put your mind at rest.

In The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, Tony Schwartz points out something that is easy to forget: human beings are not machines and need to take breaks, get enough sleep, move their bodies. A schedule that doesn’t factor that in is worthless.

Because I work at home, I have to keep myself on track. When you go to a regular job, at a workplace, with co-workers, there is structure there that I just don’t have.

I use my to-do list, not just to make sure I am doing what I need to do, but also to prioritize, to stay realistic and to balance things (like time with the kids versus work).

Also, I’m a believer in “A little every day gets the job done.” If you want to do something, like keep a blog, say, if you make time for it every day, even 5 minutes, you will get it done.

This all makes my multi-page, weekly, daily to-do list comically complicated.

Works for me, though.

 

Lazy Is As Lazy Says

I hate the word “lazy.”

It’s just a pejorative. You see someone not doing something or not doing a good job at it – and you call them lazy. It’s something I overhear parents say to children all the time and it makes me so mad.

Call a child, or anyone, “lazy,” and what have you accomplished? You’ve labeled their behavior, sure, but all that label means is “shithead.” So, you’ve made them feel even worse about themselves than they already do – because doing what you are supposed to do is usually the least painful path – but you have done nothing to help and a lot to hurt.

It boggles my mind that people can look at a child who isn’t doing his schoolwork, is failing, and say, “Oh, he’s just lazy,” as if this kid could do the work but isn’t just cuz. How can you possibly think that a kid fails in a class, looking stupid in front of his peers, his teachers, his family, plus, now, he’s failing and that’s a big problem, because he wants to? Some parents even seem to think that the kid is doing it specifically to make them angry. That’s like saying that someone “chooses” to be gay to make his or her parents mad.

Sure, sometimes a kid who is failing will act the class clown or pretend that failing is cool, sometimes whole groups of them will do that, but that’s just a ruse. It’s a whole lot harder and more terrifying to publicly try your hardest and risk failing than it is to not try at all and pretend that’s cool.

When someone isn’t flying right, it’s because there’s a reason – and frankly, the only one being lazy (not to mention, mean) is the one who calls them lazy.

Do You Know What Human Trafficking Is?

Just wrote an article about human trafficking in Houston. Many of the experts said people are often confused about what "human trafficking" means:

http://thebuzzmagazines.com/articles/2015/02/human-trafficking

Dear Abby's Hair and Me

Cover of The Best of Dear Abby"

When I was a kid, I used to read “Dear Abby.”

Who am I kidding? I still read it.

Back then, I would see Dear Abby’s swooping old-lady hair in her picture and I’d say to myself, “Self, don’t ever have, no matter how old you get, ‘Dear Abby’ hair.”

Well.

Dear Abby did her hair (or more likely, had her hairdresser do her hair in regular weekly appointments) in a bouffant. And that was old-fashioned … then.

But what’s old-fashioned now?

Jeans. Neither of my kids wear jeans. And I live in mine.

I can’t figure out how to work my own TV. (Granted, it has 5 frigging remotes.) I have to ask my son, who, as he’s turning it on and getting to the right “output,” always patiently shows me how to do it, but I have no intention of knowing how to do it next time either.

Phone calls. It absolutely never occurs to my kids to use their cell phones as phones. Text, text, text.

Printing things out on paper. Often, articles on websites and, especially, blogs aren’t even set up to be printed out on paper anymore. (If you aren’t careful, that cute little article will print out as 27 pages of gibberish.)

My kids, teenagers, use “snail mail” so rarely they still have to ask which side, left or right, the stamp goes on.

Checks. I am NOT the old lady paying for groceries in the supermarket line by check. However, I still do pay most bills that way, except for the ones that insist on being paid online. Are my payments like one of three that the companies get by paper check?

Lord, I’ll have spidery handwriting and be peering over my steering wheel before I know it.

I'm getting old, aren't I?

Impossible Things That Happen In Movies All The Time

You know cartoon physics? That’s when impossible things happen in cartoons cuz it’s funnier that way, like a character grabs the string to a single helium balloon and flies away or is perfectly fine after falling off a cliff or getting hit in the head with an anvil.

Well, there’s such a thing in movies too. There are certain stereotypical things that happen in movies all the time that never happen in real life …

People are always able to grab onto something as they fall, like a ledge.

They can then hang from said ledge forever by their fingertips.

And then, they can pull themselves up. Are you kidding? 99% of all Americans, me included, couldn’t do a single pull-up if their lives depended on it.

No one in movies can hit the broad side of a barn with a gun. A huge gun fight, dozens of people firing every which way, and no one gets hit, which is good since …

People in movies hide behind car doors from bullets. That doesn’t work in real life.

People constantly knock each other out cold in movies … and then the knocked-out person gets up and is fine.

When someone gets shot or stabbed, they keel over immediately, dead, OR they have time to give a long, eloquent speech before dying gracefully. No unsightly blood, shit or cries of agony.

Wonderful sex in shower or tub, often surrounded by hundreds of candles. (Who lit those?)

People have sex in movies with the blankets over their heads.

Also, they fall out of bed – and keep going.

No talk of contraception, ever.

Normal people live in spacious apartments in Manhattan. No.

Just as he’s about to kill someone and get away, the bad guy stops to explain and gets caught.