Should I Stay or Should I Quit

I was standing at the front door when both my boys came home last week from their first day of school. I was filled with excitement and nervousness. My youngest son is a 6th grader at the junior high, and I greeted him when he got home.

“How was your very first day at the junior high,” I said with more excitement then was probably necessary.

“I’m done dad,” he said very matter of factly.

“What do you mean? You’ve been there for ONE DAY!”

“Yeah I’m done. Not going back.”

About two hours later my older son who is a freshman in high school came walking through the door after a full day of school and two hours of soccer practice (he made the freshman team a week earlier despite not really knowing how to play soccer . . . I don’t have high hopes for the freshman soccer team).

“Well Chase, talk to me. Tell me everything. How was it?,” I asked again with the kind of excitement probably better saved for something a whole lot more important and exciting then completing one day of high school . . . . on a separate note, I may need to find a hobby so that I don’t scare my kids off with my over-zealousness in regards to how they spent their day at school.

“School was good dad, probably going to quit soccer.”

And just like that I had one kid ready to quit school altogether and another ready to quit freshman soccer less than a week after making the team.

I was being challenged. My kids were throwing down, and I needed to rise up. Be the kind of father who sits his kids down and says things like “Winners never quit, and quitters never win.” I needed to be the guy who reminded them that “Once you quit one thing, then you can quit something else, and pretty soon you’ll get good at being a quitter.”

Here’s my chance to actually parent. Do something more than just be the guy who hands his 14-year old kid a bottle of lighter fluid without thinking when he says “Having trouble starting the grill dad.” And for the record his singed eyebrows did grow back.

And yet . . . . is quitting really all that bad? Is giving up a crime? Maybe we simply live in a society that tricks people with false notions of honor for sticking things out. Or for staying.

I say people who won’t walk out of a bad movie, put a boring book down halfway through it (and that’s a shout out to my wife who ROUTINELY complains about her boring books yet WON’T PUT THEM DOWN TO START A NEW ONE!!!) or search for a new porn clip when there’s a dull scene, are not heroes but rather victims of a “staying society.”

We shouldn’t commend those people, but rather ostracize them.

You know that guy in the office who is all bitter because he’s been there for 20 years and has never gotten the recognition he deserves? He’s a stayer!!! You know what stayers get . . . they get a gold watch, a great funeral or maybe a retired number.

You know what quitters get . . . time. They get time. There’s a lot of stuff to try out there, and you may not get to try it if you don’t quit what you’re doing now to pursue something else.

You know what Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, David Geffen, Larry Ellison and Ralph Lauren all have in common . . . well they’re all billionaires and they ALL QUIT college. America is about freedom and opportunity, which I’m pretty sure are just fancy words for quitting.

In fact, the next time I see my kid throw a board game and all its pieces into the air when he’s losing I’m not going to scold him, and call him a “poor sport,” but rather I’m going to commend him and tell him he’s probably the future leader of our country.

My wife pretty much quit giving me blow jobs once we got married, and I don’t think she regrets that decision. Come to think of it my to-do list consists mostly of things I need to quit . . . my landline, dessert, donuts, my porn habit, my cable service.

Obviously my 11-year old son is not going to quit the junior high. And I’m happy to report that my older son has decided to stick it out with the freshman soccer team, and I am convinced that he will be better for it (good work outs, some new friends, and a good way to get involved at a new school). And NO, I did NOT sit my kids down and advise them to turn and run every time things become difficult or unpleasant. All kidding aside, I don’t believe in that.

But I will say that while we may admire stayers, we celebrate winners, and maybe sometimes you gotta quit something before you can win. It’s called risk. Sometimes you have to quit the Cleveland Cavaliers to win with the Miami Heat. Sometimes being a quitter isn’t all that bad. Unless of course we’re talking about blowjobs in which case you’re just a sad, sad, sorry-ass quitter and you should be embarrassed and probably ashamed. Seriously!! Come on!!

I’m trying to figure out what to quit at this very moment so I can win something…anything…but nothing is coming to mind, so I’ll keep working on it.

Good Intentions

In all areas of life, there are good intentions that sometimes just don’t get acted on or simply fail. 

The Cubs have put together a team they thought could win it all for the last 100+ years.  Good intentions.  Hasn’t quite panned out.  Although there’s always this year.

I meant to send my wife flowers on the first day of her new job, but a week went by, and then it was too late.  No action, but good intentions.

My wife keeps telling me she’s going to buy me new underwear.  I am fairly picky about my tighty whities, and my wife can only find them at Marshall’s, and she’s never at Marshall’s.  So, I continue to wear underwear with holes in them . . . . some of them are getting pretty ratty looking.   Again, she means well, but can’t pull the trigger.

Parenting is much the same way.  We all say things and make decisions that we think are in the best interests of our children.  Unfortunately some of those good intentions are either too difficult to implement or fall way down on the priority list.

From the get go my wife and I agreed that we would not allow our boys to have toy guns in the house.  Now if their friends had toy guns, and our boys were at that house then obviously they could play with the guns, but we were not going to have toy guns in our house.  That lasted until our first son could walk.  Yeah I would venture to say that we made it about a year (give or take) before he was walking around the house with a Nerf gun.  Soon after that he had a battery powered Nerf gun, and not long after that he had a fully-automatic Nerf gun.  We now own every Nerf gun product made, and we’ve actually invited other boys over to our house to have all out wars.  In fact, I usually get involved in those battles, and have on more than one occasion been scolded by my wife for screaming things like “Die you Commie Pig!”  We’ve recently graduated to airsoft guns, and my boys and I research and buy guns based on their FPS Power (Feet Per Second . . . how fast they shoot).  Let’s put it this way, if World War III breaks out you probably want to come to my house, as I can offer you protection.

It was also our intention to have our boys read for 20 minutes a night.  Whether the book was required reading for a particular class or whether it was just for fun, we wanted them to read 20 minutes a night.  That’s happened once. . . . in like the last five years.  I’m not entirely sure my nine-year-old son actually knows how to read.  It’s gotten so bad that he will negotiate with us when it comes time for his 20 minutes of reading. 

“Jack it’s time to read.”

“No, but I’ll take a shower.”

Or “Jack it’s time to read.”

“No, but I’ll walk the dog.”

Or “Jack it’s time to read.”

“No, but I’ll empty the dish washer.”

I think if we keep this up he’ll eventually start negotiating with things that I actually want.

“Jack it’s time to read.”

“No, but I’ll change the oil in your car.”

It’s awful, and rarely do we get 20 minutes of reading from both the boys.

Getting the boys to bed early is yet another example of good intentions gone bad.  Pretty  much from day one we had planned to get the boys to bed early (at least during the week) so that they would be fresh the next day.  We started with an 8:00 PM bedtime.  That didn’t work.  They were wide awake 30 minutes later wandering the house looking for something to do.  I once heard a noise coming from the living room a good hour after I had put the boys to bed.  I went downstairs to investigate, only to find my oldest on the couch watching a movie and eating a bowl of Chex Mix.  He told me to keep it down as the “good part” was about to happen.  At this point it’s pure anarchy, and if we can get them to bed before we’re in bed, I consider it a major accomplishment.

Same with sleepovers.  They both LOVE having sleepovers with pals.  And it’s gotten out of hand.  I’ve actually started saying things like: “If your last name is not Whipple, you cannot sleep in this house tonight,” and like three different kids will get up and walk out of my house.   Unfortunately for our intentions, having our kids sleep at other houses is like a free night – I mean who turns down an offer to get rid of a kid for a night?  But after we realized that both of our children were having trouble getting up for school on Monday, we knew we needed to act.

So we decided that they could have one sleepover per weekend – no back-to-backs.   Good compromise.  The first weekend we put this rule to the test, Jack had an impromptu sleepover at a friend’s house on Friday night, and had already planned an overnight for Saturday because we had dinner plans.  So, instead of doing the right thing and upholding the rule, we decided to let Jack have the second sleepover. 

Oh well.  Good intentions, but my wife and I don’t see each other enough, especially during the baseball and soccer seasons, so we weren’t going to let a little thing like the back-to-back sleepover rule wreck our night out.  It’s a priority thing.

So my new philosophy is that all I need are good intentions – all is excused if things don’t actually pan out.  Although, if a certain someone doesn’t take some shopping action soon, I’m going to run out of underwear.   Maybe I should have bought those flowers after all.