The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for June 2014

What Happens When Your Kid Is A Jerk?

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I think a horse passed this way

It is considered bad form to try and help your child deal with a jerk by forcing the jerk to use his tongue to clean a bridge filled with horse shit so I suppose I won’t try it.

My own mother always advised I consider the feelings of other and that I think about how I would feel if I were the one being treated a certain way.

Someone ring her up and tell her I am sure I would be furious if some grownup forced one of my kids to use their tongue to clean the bridge and then I’ll explain why I want to take said kid by the scruff of his neck.

It is not just because he is a jerk but because he is a jerk to my kids and has been for two years now.

What Happens When Your Kid Is A Jerk?

I hope I never find out that my kid is being a jerk to other people. I hope they are always civil and that they mind their own business because if I found out otherwise I would be upset.

Some parents live with their heads in the clouds and or intentional blinders but not me. I pay attention and I recognize that my kids are human and sometimes human beings do stupid crap. Believe me, I have done my share.

But I also know that my kids know better and the reports I get from school and other parents make it pretty clear that they are good kids. Not to mention the number of invitations they receive to spend time with friends or go to parties.

Don’t misunderstand that last line, I am not saying my kids are the most popular. I doubt they are and no one in this house cares about that.

Anyhoo I heard today about an incident at camp between my son and another boy. They had problems last year. The other boy had problems with my daughter and other kids too.

Rumor is that he is troubled.

But what I don’t know is if his parents know that their really tall boy is acting like an entitled jerk. Last summer I let a lot of this go because I wanted my kids to figure it out.

Since I didn’t hear about anything I thought was too hard for them to deal with I stood back. I paid attention, but I stood back.

Well today I decided I am not holding back for long this time. The camp director is going to hear from me and if that doesn’t work I’ll call this kid’s parents.

Some Things Never Change

My understanding is this boy tried to physically move my son today. I told my son to explain to this kid that he isn’t allowed to put his hands on him and then if he continues I will support stronger measures.

It sounds ridiculous but in my day if you put your hands on another guy you did so knowing it might lead to a more aggressive response and sometimes it did.

The kids have heard me tell them stories about some of the jerks of my past. Most of those stories have been censored because I don’t really want them getting into some of the crap I did in large part because I don’t want them getting hurt.

But also because now they expel you from school and sometimes bring legal measures to bear and I don’t think any of us really need to deal with that crap, especially when the cause is usually so damn stupid.

Still a part of me wants to show my son a couple of tricks to use on this other kid because I know if he kicked him in the balls and punched him in the throat this crap would end.

This other boy is acting like a jerk in part because he towers over my son but what he doesn’t know is that Steiner the minor is starting to fill out a bit and there is real muscle there.

I know because when Steiner the minor and I wrassle it is not so easy to win any more. If I don’t put real effort into it I can’t win and I love that.

The Camp Director’s Turn

I suppose for now we’ll see if the camp director can fix this. That would be the ideal solution. A couple of words from him and the other boy will keep his hands to himself and be civil.

Got to run for now, I have to look for a bridge horses cross just in case I need it down the line. 😉

Everyday Is Punch A Social Media Expert In The Mouth Day

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bodiam castle

Everyday Is Punch A Social Media Expert In The Mouth Day should be amended to read that we should slap, kick, bite and gouge out the eyes of all the experts who keep telling us about the rules of writing and blogging.

I am not writing this because I am an angry white guy or because at 45 I am better, stronger, smarter, faster and humbler than the yahoos who keep pumping out the tripe that tells people how to become a successful blogger or writer.

In the interest of full disclosure some of those people have more readers, more subscribers, more pageviews and more book sales than I do. In short they have more of most of the things that people use to identify success.

That might mean they know something. That might mean you can listen to their advice. Hell I tell my children there is no reason to reinvent the wheel unless you need to.

Work smarter, not harder.

You Are Sucking The Wrong Thing

“If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.”
— Stephen King (On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft)

Some of you are sucking in such a way that you are removing the joy of writing from all this. I don’t understand why you insist on using your teeth. I don’t understand why you take something that should put a smile on the face of those who practice it and turn it into work.

Yeah, I know that writing is damn hard and that sometimes it makes you want to tear your hair out. There are moments where it is as enjoyable as having a colonoscopy without any anesthesia and that makes me sad.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

It can also be viewed as being like a great workout. You can look at it as a marathon and you can look at the feeling you get when you click publish as being similar to that adrenaline rush you get when you finish the race/workout.

Climbing that hill can be painful and there are moments where you want to punch the person who signed you up for it in the mouth. There are moments where you wonder who is dumber– you or them.

But if you keep pushing and you come to the crest of the hill and see the ocean just in the distance it is hard not to be inspired. It is so damn easy to picture yourself lying on a beach or enjoying the water on a sailboat so you keep pushing and discover that running down hill can be hard too.

Gravity pulls you and you have to fight to avoid moving at breakneck speed but the end result is the same.

One big adrenaline rush and a sense of satisfaction.

About Castles

If you want first hand knowledge about what I can do to a castle you can ask Jericho. She’ll tell you that I do my research and that I’ll find the blueprints and study them, because there is always a weakness.

She’ll tell you I’ll try going through open doors and windows and that if I can’t get in that way I will go over or under the walls. If need be I’ll lay siege to the damn thing and tear it down stone by stone.

Old Jack wasn’t built for grace, but demolition is something I know a little bit about. The gift of having a handshake a gorilla fears can be used in many different ways and castles are perfect for exploring those.

But let’s remember sometimes the reason you tear something down is so that you can rebuild it. Sometimes you pull down the walls and lay a foundation upon the old one that allows you to build something that is more meaningful, more significant and ultimately more beautiful.

It is not always easy to edit a story you have written and edited multiple times. After a while you begin to lose your perspective but once you step back and catch your breath you sometimes notice things you didn’t see before.

The kids have heard me talk about this more than once. They know that sometimes I will hang upside down with one eye covered in plastic wrap just to get a different look at something.

Yeah it sounds goofy, but I am a writer and I know things. I am a writer and I see things. I am not always limited to conventional thought or approaches.

Sometimes I catch a flicker of something from the corner of my eye and I have to chase after that. It reminds me of being a sculptor.

All I have is a large slap of stone and I have no clue what it wants to be until I start chipping away at it. My characters are like that too. I have a basic understanding about who they are and what motivates them but I don’t know the details until I see how they behave in certain situations.

Hell if I know what they will do or how they will respond. They are people and people are often illogical, irrational and unpredictable.

But that is what makes us love them. Or maybe it is more accurate to say true love is when you accept them for who they are and not who you wish they would be.

Everyday Is Punch A Social Media Expert In The Mouth Day

And now if you will excuse me there are chumps to punch, bums to roll and stories to write. Don’t ask me what any of that means or if you do, do it in the comments.

A Letter To My Children-2014

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Letter to my children

Dear Children,

Summer break is in full swing and it should be a time where we are all filled with gratitude and joy. Not just because it is summer and homework is turning into a distant memory but because of how far we have come.

You don’t know all of the details about what has happened the last five years but you know enough to recognize we have been through some challenges but I don’t think you know how much we have overcome.

I don’t expect you to really understand that because I have tried to protect you from most of it. It wasn’t an easy decision to make because part of me thought it might be easier to let you know more but childhood goes far too quickly and I decided I wanted to protect your innocence as best I could.

We sort of stumbled into the end of the school year and beginning of summer. It wasn’t the sort of triumphant entrance I would have wanted but truthfully it wasn’t all that bad either.

Challenges Help You Grow And Learn

I remember being a kid and thinking that grownups knew everything and being frustrated that they couldn’t use their infinite knowledge and wisdom to make life easier.

It never made sense to me how your grandparents could ignore this tremendous resource because it seemed like such an obvious thing to me.

I don’t remember how old I was when I figured out that they didn’t know everything and that they were winging it. My best guess is somewhere around 15 or 16 it dawned upon me not only did they not know all the answers they didn’t always know what they were doing with my siblings and I.

They just made random decisions and went with it.

We have done it too. Mom and I haven’t always been able to say we were 100 percent certain that each decision we have made is the right one but that is ok because life isn’t mapped out with perfect precision.

You can’t always know what lies on the other side of the door. Doesn’t matter if you open it or have a window to look through you never really know what lies on the other side until you step through and experience it.

One of the advantages about challenges is that they force you to grow. They force you to make decisions and those choices are part of what help you learn about life and that is a good thing.

I want you to grow and learn. I don’t want you to think of your life as being caught between the hammer and the anvil because that suggests you have no control and that is not entirely true.

We may not have control of all that goes on around us but we do have control of how we act and react to that which happens. I want you to learn how to identify Things That Matter and recognize The People You Love Most.

I want you to be The Kind Of Friend You Want To Be  and to understand that part of  how you take control of life is understanding that you sometimes you Don’t Ask For Approval.

People Matter

The common thread is here is not just that people matter but that you matter. The challenge is figuring out which people matter and which do not.

School and some of your extracurricular activities have already shown you that not everyone is going to be nice and that not everyone will respect you or be respectful to you.

You need to learn how to ignore the people who drip negativity and do nothing but try to tear you down. I can’t tell you how to do it but I can promise you that you will learn.

It won’t always be easy and some of it will hurt. That might be harder for me to accept than you because I hate seeing you get hurt. My natural instinct is to stomp on those who do it but I pull back on that because the best thing I can do for you is support you and help you figure out how to do it yourself.

There is no benefit to letting me fight all your battles. You know I will always step in if you need help but you won’t ever find out how capable you are if I do and you won’t ever figure out how powerful you can be if you never take life on.

About Your Father and 2014

I don’t know when you’ll read this but I don’t expect it to be for many years so that will impact how you understand this next part. I am frustrated now because I feel like I am straddling two lives and two worlds.

I don’t regret being in this position because it had to happen to move from the place we were into where we are now and where I hope us to be.

If things work as I want and expect one day we’ll sit down and smile about this time and remember it as the moment we stepped into a brighter future that took a great life and made it even better.

I love you guys,

Dad

P.S. If you want to see prior letters here you go:

Part of me is torn by the nondescript headline because it doesn’t really tell you anything and some of those letters are pretty meaty. It almost makes me want to go back in and rename them but I won’t because it would screw up all sorts of links and that would anger the blogging/social media gods.

Not that I really care about those gods but…

What It Takes To Be A Writer

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There is truth in this.
There is truth in this.

Stephen King is a friend but not in the Facebook way of friendship but that is ok with me because I am not someone who is willing to limit myself to conventional definitions of relationships which is probably tied into why some people wonder if I am in touch with reality.

But as I always tell the Shmata Queen I know things and not all of these are limited to having an imagination that never quits working or a fire in the belly that never stops burning.

You see when that woman asks me to explain myself I ask her if she has read my blogs because that is usually where you’ll find answers to most questions and it is where I hang out because as my friend Stephen says you can’t become a good writer without doing a lot of writing and reading.

I put on my headphones, turn on the music and turn inwards and think about the things that make me happiest and the things that are most painful.

The search for scars doesn’t take very long at all.

That used to bother me. I didn’t like admitting how easily I could find the scrapes, bumps and bruises and that sometimes they stll hurt.

Sometimes I wondered if it meant there was something wrong with me. Sometimes I wondered if it was proof that I held on to stuff longer than I should and then I came across Stephen’s advice and I realized I had discovered untapped riches.

What It Takes To Be A Writer

That quote made me realize I could look at those scars as being capped oil wells that were waiting to be drilled. All I had to do was start digging and I could mine the gold.

So I started poking around and I found fodder for stories like Plenty of Time, An Uncertain Certainty and many of the other tales you can find here.

It turned heartache and heartbreak into something that had more meaning to me because I started looking at my experiences and thinking about why people liked some of those stories so very much.

Sometimes it was because they were clever but more often than not it was because people could relate to what they read. They remembered falling in love and they remembered falling out.

Didn’t always matter whether they broke up with someone or were broken up with, they remembered and if we painted just enough of a picture they filled in the rest of that empty canvas.

Sometimes I went through old letters and read them so that I could get a fresh look at what it had been like.

That is where I found notes where I remembered what it felt like to hear “you are the love of my life” or “this isn’t working anymore, good luck to you.”

It is where I came across notes from grandparents who told me about how proud they were of my accomplishments, offered advice and or congratulated me.

Those letters were fodder that fueled my imagination and gave me ideas about how to turn them into fragments of fiction. It is where TheJackB began to become more than just a blog where I recounted a few stories about what my kids do or did.

And now I find myself in a place where I am working on trying to add more layers and depth to the stories I write. When you build a tapestry you want people to see many things and you want characters that are complex because people are complex.

Write Daily

A while back I read several posts from bloggers who said they thought writing daily was a problem and that it had a negative impact on their blogs.

Some readers have complained about how frequently I update but I have found no better way to become a better writer than through the practice and discipline of writing daily.

Does it have an impact on quality?

Maybe but that doesn’t necessarily translate as being negative. It can always be positive too.

I be very curious to sit down with my pal Stephen and talk about some of these things with him too. I know from reading his book On Writing and from various other things that my thoughts aren’t so far off from his in some of these areas, but I would still like to drill things down deeper.

There are formulas and rules you can apply that will help writers become more successful. There are steps you can take to build your blog faster but the path I am trying to walk isn’t built upon formulas and concrete walkways that others have created.

What I want to do is incorporate those things and then erect my own scaffolding so that I can build the platform that works best for me.

And now if you will excuse me I am off to pick at some of those aforementioned scars.

 

Father’s Day, Lurkers & 99 Things That Matter

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Mystical station

They lost their fathers three years ago, weeks apart but close enough to make me wonder about coincidence, connections and more. They are people who have been a part of my life for so long now I cannot remember a time when they were not.

I think about them around this time of year but I never wonder if they know I love them, each in a different way but love nonetheless.

The day approaches and I haven’t made any plans and I am not really sure if I will. Some of it is because I am not a fan of the day any more than I am one of Mother’s or Valentine’s Day.

Maybe it is because I don’t like being told when I should remember to celebrate those who brought me into the world or those I love.

Is it coincidence that Fire and Rain is playing now or that I am thinking of those who have moved on to wherever or whatever comes next?

Maybe.

I don’t spend too much time thinking about these things but when I do I take the message and do something with it. Might be real or it might just be in my head.

Except the thing is I can’t help but believe there is something more because when I look at this and close my eyes I always know who is looking back at me and I remember that somethings can’t be explained until they have been experienced.

Lurkers And Blog Comments

Ten years of blogging and the more things change the more they stay the same. We have the same conversations about how to build an active comment section and how to gain new subscribers.

When it doesn’t happen the way we hope we find ourselves wrapped up in questions about why one blog is better than another and sometimes it leads to some nasty thoughts in your head or maybe that is just me.

Maybe my ego wreaks havoc when I look at other blogs and wonder how someone who can’t write as well as I can is doing better. Most of the time I am good at maintaining some perspective and reminding myself that most of the time success is subjective.

But I understand the concerns and thoughts about the lack of comments. I am always happy when I get more comments on posts, it always feel good but it is never what drives me.

That is because I love writing and because when I share posts like this it is cathartic and it helps remind me about how far I have come.  Life is about moments and small victories and being able to share those with the people who mean the most to us.

Perspective comes from a variety of places and posts like the one Oren shared about discovering he has stage four lung cancer.

Things That Matter

The Facebook dadblogger community has rallied around Oren as have many of his and his family’s loved ones. We have done our best to provide whatever support we can.

It includes a fundraiser to help Oren and his family. If I can geek it up a bit it reminds me of  a quote from  Return Of The King.

“Come, Mr. Frodo!’ he cried. ‘I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.”

I have been lucky  enough not to have had any major health issues but I have faced some other challenges that were significant and life changing.

What I have learned from those is that sometimes you have to ask for help because the burden you are carrying is too damn big to deal with by yourself.

It wasn’t easy for me to do and it was harder for me to admit that I couldn’t carry the load by myself but I learned.

If there is a lesson I want my children to learn it is to appreciate good health and to understand the importance of giving back. I don’t want them to do it because of karma or because it looks good on college applications.

I want them to do it because I want them giving back is a core value of ours and that when we give something without expectation it feels better.

Van Morrison is singing about sailing Into The Mystic now so I think it is time for me to follow.

Be good to each other.

How Do You Describe a Successful Father?

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Dad The Writer
This ties into answering the question posed above.

Five or six years ago the boys and I are sitting around a table drinking coffee. It is Monday morning but none of us are at work because we all fell prey to employment gods.

Each and every one of us offered as a human sacrifice so that some other person(s) can continue working while we try to figure out how we got sucker punched and what our new identity is.

We’re parents now, each and every one of us and we are scrambling to come up with an answer that we can live with. It is one thing to be fired because you are incompetent and another to be terminated while the oafs remain employed.

The weight of it all falls heavily upon my shoulders and I am uncertain how to make sense of it because the standard I measure myself against is my father.

He put in 38 years at the same place, held multiple positions but they were all promotions and all at the same place and what do I have to show for myself.

How Do You Describe a Successful Father?

I ask the guys what they think and they provide answers that focus around providing for our families but not solely in a financial sense. Successful dads help teach their children how to become productive members of society who are capable of standing on their own.

One of them notices the look on my face and asks me what I am thinking. “You sound like a girl, are we sleeping together.”

It is supposed to be witty banter but it comes out flat and edgy.

“Jack, we have known each other too long for you to try and bullshit me. We are all unemployed here, might as well unload because we get it.”

I nod my head and tell him that I feel like I have failed and I can’t figure out what I have done or what I am missing.

“I am not someone who can pretend I have no role in any of this. If my dad could hold down one job for all those years, why can’t I? Why do my kids get the failure.”

They shake their head and tell me to “shut the fuck up and stop being a victim” but I am not having it.

“I am not saying I am victim. I always figure it out and I know I will get another job but damn, what is up with this.”

We split a moment of silence five ways and then revelation comes.

“You need to go back to writing. Why are you in sales? Writing is what you do best and what you have always done.”

I nod my head because he is right.

The Future Becomes The Present

Confession: I have never read a Hemingway story in its entirety.  That is not for any particular reason, just worked out that way but because of his success as a writer I have paid attention to his quotes and because they resonate with me.

I listened to the guys and focused on my writing and that is how I am known now. It is not just how I describe myself but how others describe me and that makes me happy.

But I haven’t quite made it to the place I want to get to. There are stories to be told and if the blog is any proof people like reading them.

They look at Maybe A Gun Would Have Helped and tell me they want to know what happened. So I know I am not the only one who believes I have that great book(s) inside of me but even if I was I would still run this particular dream down.

In part it is because one of the greatest joys in life is reading a story that you don’t want to finish because you hate to say goodbye to it.

That story lives inside of me and I have come to believe that the great writers who produce such tales do so because of their ability to touch the joy and sorrow of their own lives and share it with the readers.

I have the joy and the sorrow or so I told my son.

As we walked the dog through the neighborhood and talked about life I listened to him talk about his dreams and shared some of mine.

Dreams Deferred and Fulfilled

I told him I believed the challenges and successes of the past would provide for us all. It would give us the experience to know we had the strength to withstand the challenges and an appreciation for the good times as well as the bad.

It would help us navigate the moments between dreams deferred and dreams fulfilled.

During the middle of our walk I listened to his stories and wondered if he would be like me and measure himself against my life. I wondered what his assessment would be and thought about how far we have all come since the day the boys and I sat around that table.

When he asked me if I ever felt like I had failed I nodded my head and said more than once.

“But every time I have fallen down I have gotten back up because lying down is not an option for us.”

He nodded his head and as we continued down the road I wondered again how do you describe a successful father.