The Pomp and Circumstance Is Over

The pomp and circumstance is over, the ensuing party complete. My son has graduated high school! The last half of the year was a battle, not because the classes were hard, but just getting him to get up and go to school was difficult. Somehow, even though he had zero motivation to be there and he put in as little effort as possible, he managed to graduate Magna Cum Laude. Much to the horror of his guidance counselor at school, he has no plans to go to a conventional four year college. I find this quite refreshing and courageous.

There is a sort of unwritten rule these days that you MUST go to college, especially if you’re considered smart in school. Kids are told from the time they hit middle school that you have to go to college if you want to make a decent living and not end up flipping burgers your whole adult life (no offense intended toward any burger flippers out there). There seems to be no choice; you go to college and you’ll get a great job, or you don’t go to college and you’ll be a loser. Granted, you have a better chance of getting a higher paying job with a college education, but as adults with a brain of our own we know this is not an absolute truth. We all know people who went to college and barely scrape by, and we all know people who never went to college or dropped out and are fairly wealthy. Besides, it’s not all about how much money you make, but about how much you like what you do. That seems to be missing in the discussion today.

When I was a senior in high school, I wanted to take a year off and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. It’s not that I didn’t want to go to college, I just didn’t have the money to go where I wanted, as my parents had told me in my senior year that they couldn’t give me any money for college. I also wasn’t sure what I wanted to go for. Well, actually, I did know what I wanted to go to college for, but it wasn’t what my parents, some of my family and friends, most of my teachers and my guidance counselor thought I should be doing. I wanted to be a writer, preferably a sports writer. I thought that would be a great career choice since I loved writing and I loved sports. Plus, I figured if I ever got married, I’d still have to go to the games (Sorry you don’t like me going to the Bruins game, dear, but I have to go. It’s my job!).

I was constantly being told I was too smart to be a writer, that I should be an engineer or an architect because I was very good in math, or I should go into accounting or finance. My thought was that I didn’t want to do any of those things, but I felt pressure from all sides to do something like that. I was also one of those kids that did what my parents told me to do – well, sometimes, but I didn’t like to go against them. I thought if I took a year off, maybe my parents would forget about what they thought I should do and just let me go for what I wanted to do. However, we all somehow came up with the money to pay for my first semester’s tuition and I never took the time to truly explore what I wanted to do.

Fast forward 35 years and here I am doing a job I like but don’t love, and thinking about writing most of the time. And I’ve felt like this for a number of years. So when my kids were small, I swore I wouldn’t push them to do something I wanted them to do or thought they’d be good at, and I would let them choose their career and be what they wanted to be (within reason, of course, I wouldn’t let them be an axe murderer or a drug dealer). So when my daughter told us that she wanted to take some time to figure out what she wanted to do after 3 semesters of college, we totally supported her decision. When she decided to go back to school after a year, we totally supported that decision, too. She’s going for what she wants to do, not what we told her to do. Now my son wants to pursue a career in the music field and I’m totally for it. He may be a musician or a producer – it’s what he wants to do and has a passion for.

I’m proud of both my kids as they make the transition to full-on adulthood. They’re exploring what they want to do with their lives and not letting the masses make them conform to some artificial norm. I wish I had had that kind of strength and courage when I was their age. Who knows, maybe I’d actually love what I do and you’d be reading my book instead of my blog!

Paraprosdokians

A friend of mine at work, whose sense of humor is very similar to mine, sent me an email last week with the title, Paraprosdokian. I had no clue what that meant, but was in need of a bit of humor (as usual at work) so I read it. The email started with the definition of paraprosdokian: "Figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently used in a humorous situation." For example, “Where there's a will, I want to be in it.”

Well, I guess my brain is wired for paraprosdokians, because there are a lot of times that somebody says something or does something, or situations occur, that make me think of things like these. Thankfully, I don’t have Tourette’s Syndrome, so I don’t just blurt them out, but there are times I need to bite my tongue and stifle a laugh. There have been many times that I could have messed up my life more than it is by simply saying a few words, a paraprosdokian. 

Here are some of my favorites from the email:

Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.

Maybe this is why my parents always told us to walk away from a fight if at all possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen intelligent people end up looking like a fool because they were goaded into temporary insanity by a master button pusher. Or a younger brother.

The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

Well, at least it’s the “last thing” they want to do, but you definitely need to be open-minded and keep all options on the table. Just the threat of being hurt, maybe by an older brother, can keep you in line sometimes. You know the famous quote, “The only thing we need to fear, is fear itself”? Well, I can tell you from experience that you need to fear an older brother that you just goaded into an argument and who was then punished.

If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

Contrary to popular belief today, there is right and wrong. We are all wrong at one time or another– all of us. My parents taught me to stand up for what I believed and to not just go along with what someone else said, thought, or did. There are just times I cannot agree with something, especially if that would be the “politically correct” thing to do. Funny, though, that my older brothers thought our parents’ teaching in regard to not just going along with something should be suspended where they were involved. 

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

How true. Watch little kids; they say and do whatever in public. Have an itch in a place that shouldn’t be scratched in public? No problem for a kid. Is that little booger just barely hanging on to your nose bugging you? They just pick it out…and then eat it. We, as adults, do some things, too, but first we make sure no one is looking. Or we make sure that we have enough time to escape without being identified after we pass some gas.

I thought I wanted a career. Turns out I just wanted paychecks.

Back in the days when I was young and ambitious, I wanted to be the big guy. I wanted to be a leader, to manage people and processes, to be one of the few that the many looked to for direction, guidance and information. However, two things happened that changed my mind; I had kids and I actually became a manager. The kids helped me realize that my job was not as important as I thought it was. In the grand scheme of things it meant very little, especially compared to how much they loved me. Becoming a manager, and the extra hours at work that came with it, just reinforced that realization. Just give me a regular paycheck with enough money to take care of my family.

I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

Some people are fault-finders. They need to figure out whose fault it was that something did or did not happen. It can be a long, laborious process that can make you half crazy, trying to tie events together to make your case. I prefer to simply blame someone else. There’s no research, no investigation, no logical thinking. Blame-shifters live happier, less complicated lives than fault-finders.

A clear conscience is the sign of a fuzzy memory.

We didn’t get away with much in my house. Somehow my parents usually knew when we were up to something. If we did happen to pull off a caper, they found out about it later. They could probably tell just by looking at us – we had the face of a guilty conscience. However, these days I realize that a fuzzy memory has nothing to do with my conscience and everything to do with getting older and the associated senior moments.

I love surprises, unexpected endings and humor – all the ingredients of a paraprosdokian. Life would just be too boring without them. Something small, like a humorous email at work, can change my day. A little laughter to break up the monotony is always welcome in my view. Besides, why do now what you can put off ‘til later?