A Bullying Pandemic - Stop It Now!

Twice in the past two days I’ve noticed cases of bullying in the workplace.  In one instance, a couple of people were being called out for wearing too much perfume and/or cologne.  In another, a person was being called out in the form of a joke for having an untidy work environment.  The first case was shared only between a few people, but the second was shared across the entire organization through an email.  Both were intended to be amusing.  The targets of their comments were not amused.

According to Wikipedia, "bullying may be defined as the activity of repeated, aggressive behavior intended to hurt another person, physically or mentally.  Bullying is characterized by an individual behaving in a certain way to gain power over another person."

October is Bullying Prevention Awareness month.  Most people think that bullying is something that only happens with children.  And really, children are the ones who are most vulnerable and really should be the primary focus of bullying prevention initiatives.  But I think most people who are bullies are that way their entire lives.  And the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) website agrees, citing, “children who are bullies may continue to be bullies as adults, and are prone to becoming child and spouse abusers.”  Bullies will leave high school, move on into college or the job market, and yet they’ll never “grow up” or stop with that attitude.  Their only desire is to take criticism or focus off of their own perceived inequalities and attempt to point out the flaws of others, hoping that their social circle will agree and give them that tiny amount of satisfaction.  And that microscopic amount of power they then hold over their targets is undeniably exquisite to them, like a juicy steak or a cold beer after a hard day's work.  They thrive on it.  Some even need it like an addiction.

I, like umpteen million kids in the world, was a victim of bullying in junior high school.  I was short, kinda pudgy, and I had a very small group of close friends who could be labeled (shout-out to my post from yesterday) as “nerds.”  In one very traumatizing incident, I was sitting at a table outside a restaurant at an amusement park with a neighbor and some of his friends, all of whom were older than me, and my neighbor accidentally spilled his Pepsi all over the table.  He then (intentionally) pushed that spilled Pepsi in my direction, dumping a huge portion of it onto my shorts.  I was furious, but I had no idea that the torture was only just beginning.  A few minutes later, as we met up with more of HIS friends, he declared that I had urinated on myself.  They began calling me "Pee Pee" because of this--all except two of them (thank you Apollo and Rich), but for YEARS afterwards I was called “Pee Pee” by my neighbor and all of his other friends.  In the hallways at school.  In public.  A few prank calls even.  It was absolutely awful.

One particular kid, Brian, was the worst of the group.  This individual must have had horrible self-confidence, because he bullied anyone and everyone he could.  He called me this derogatory name for years—all the way through high school despite the fact that I had grown 5 inches taller and packed on 50 lbs of muscle between 7^th and 11^th grade.  I guess he thought I was a coward or something and wouldn't stand up for myself.  He was a complete and total jerk.

Now let’s jump ahead a few years.  Shortly after I turned 21, I began to frequent a bar called Irwin’s that a friend’s dad owned.  I had a new group of friends who I’d met while in college, and their network of friends went well into the hundreds.  On one particular raucous evening, I was there with a bunch of my closer friends have a jolly old time, and I saw this Brian sitting at a table with a couple of dopey-looking girls.  He was hitting on them extensively, they looked pathetically amused by his attempts, and I decided that I’d try to be a stand-up guy and bury the hatchet with him.  I approached him, he turned to me, and I said, “Hey, Brian, how’s it going?”  His response was, “Hey, PEE PEE!” as he laughed and looked over at the girls, hoping they'd laugh with him.  They didn't.

I’ll never forget that night.  It was like a Western saloon where the piano player stops playing and everyone freezes, knowing excrement is about to hit the fan.  Irwin’s was MY hangout, and here he was disrespecting me in the childish ways he was known for.  And it was quite comical now that I reminisce.  I immediately had four HUGE friends behind me waiting to drag him out into the parking lot to beat the pulp out of him, but I just looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Brian, don’t you EVER call me that again.”  And then I just stood there, staring at him with the Devil in my eyes.  Waiting for his response.  Waiting...

He was laughing at first, of course, but the girls with him immediately got up and fled (they were apparently smarter than I’d credited initially), and yet it took Brian several moment to realize the predicament he was in.  I literally had to hold back one of my friends from punching him in the face—this particular friend was better-known throughout town as a person who liked punching other people in the face--and Brian knew him well enough to know that fact.  Brian panicked, and he started almost crying, repeatedly saying, “I’m sorry man.  Are we cool?  Are we cool?”  I just stared at him for a good ten or fifteen seconds, feeling the adrenaline pump through my veins as I debated back and forth with myself as to how I should handle this situation.  Finally I just shook my head and walked away.

I really am not sure what happened to him later on that night.  I know he left, but I seem to recall a couple of my friends jawing at him out in the parking lot, and I wouldn't have been surprised if one of them got right up in his face and gave him a piece of mind.

And then I ran into Brian in State College, PA several months later, and at this point I was going through my “body mod” faze and had several facial piercings and my tattoos on full display.  He was with a couple of friends and was getting on the parking garage elevator to ride up to his car, and I got on and stood only a few feet from him, towering over him, saying nothing.  The couple he was with got off on the second floor, and they must have known something was wrong with him because the girl asked if he was OK.  He just nodded and said nothing, the doors closed, and we both rode to the third floor in complete silence.  At one point I looked over at him briefly, chuckled to myself, but said nothing.  As soon as the elevator doors opened, he was gone.  If he had a tail, it would have been tucked between his legs.

I still see him from time to time.  He pops up on some of my social media friend's networks.  I saw him a couple of times at a local gym, although I don't think he noticed me there.  I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive him for the years of torment he put me through, and I doubt he realizes how lucky he is in that I'm not a violent person.  It's kinda funny, because a recent, newer acquaintance of mine knows him well and said that he ALWAYS would try to pick fights with people at bars, and he'd always rely on his friends to bail him out if he ever got into trouble.  I guess he still hasn't grown up.  Very pathetic, Brian J.  Very pathetic.

Most kids these days don’t have the advantages I had.  I was smart—smarter than every single one of the kids who bullied me.  I was tall.  I lifted weights regularly.  I learned three forms of martial arts.  I developed a strong social network to support me.  Most kids these days don’t have that.  In fact, most kids have to put up with it for years on their own with no way of standing up or fighting back.  Some are lucky and can overcome the challenges of bullying, like Whitney Kropp of West Branch, Michigan, who was elected to the homecoming court as a prank (and not a very good one—reminds me of that scene from The Other Guys where Mark Wahlberg’s character learned to “dance sarcastically” to make fun of the artsy kids).  Anyway, if you don’t know about Whitney's story, you can read all about it here:  http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/29/us/michigan-teen-prank/index.html  Fortunately for her, the bullying situation went public, and the community got involved, but not until she was bullied for years prior.  All because she was different.  But she's apparently doing better, and that's great.  Great for you, Whitney.  My heart bleeds for you.

Bullying is a pandemic.  It’s universal.  I see and hear about it occurring in Vietnam through my in-laws.  Kids all over the world put up with it on a daily basis.  It’s a huge problem that often ends with very real and disastrous results.  Documented evidence suggests that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were bullied.  The same goes for James Holmes.  I’d be willing to bet that a majority of mass murderers were bullied at some point in their lives.  And we cry foul, asking where were these homicidal kids parents.  Not that I am in any way justifying what they did, but nobody asks where the parents were of the kids who bullied them.  There's a cause to every effect.  Maybe if people had treated them with dignity and respect, the horror they created could have been averted.

We, as parents, as adults, need to intervene now.  We need to talk to our kids about bullying.  We need to recognize when we, the grown-ups, are bullying.  Like that office employee who poked fun at his/her coworkers for wearing too much cologne and perfume, we need to recognize that something so trivial as that can create tension, aggravation, stress, etc.  Our kids and grandkids learn from us, and there’s no excuse for someone of any age bullying someone else.  Absolutely none.

Stand up the next time you experience a bully, whether you’re the victim or a bystander or a member of a social circle where one of your friends is bullying someone else.  Don’t let this pandemic continue to destroy lives.

Here’s some great info regarding bullying:

http://www.nctsn.org/resources/public-awareness/bullying-prevention-awareness-month

It's a Boy!

Taking a break from my near non-stop promotion of my new book, I have to just share some good news with my followers.  If you don’t already know, my wife and I found out yesterday that we will be having another boy.  Yay!

I find it a little amusing how the world of technology has changed things like having babies over the years.  Even ten or fifteen years ago, people did not have the technology available today.  We received 3D images of what our little guy looks like and how he was moving all around.  Cute and creepy at the same time, I think.

I wasn’t adverse to the idea of having a girl, but our mothers would have certainly loved to buy lots of pink clothes and pink toys and pink this and pink that.  I do think having another boy will be a little more fun for Adam.  I think he'll really bond with his little brother.  We’ve decided to go with the name Benjamin (Benyamin is the Muslim name), although when asked, Adam said he wanted to name him “Poopy.”  Gotta love kids!  But I can picture those two little boys having a blast together.  I’m thinking bunk beds, huge forts, playing in the woods and creek behind our house, etc.  I can only imagine what the next decade and a half will bring to our happy little family, but I’m super excited about it!

It also opens up the possibility of us having another child.  We always said we wanted a boy and a girl, and now that we have two boys, who knows?  I know our mothers would love a little girl.  And we’re still young, so it's entirely plausible.  Maybe in a couple of years we might try one last time for a girl.  After all, my parents had my sister when they were in their late 30s, and she turned out fine—I think. =P

I’ll be back later in the week with more promotions of my new novel and any other subjects I come across to rant about!

Why Do People Hate Leann Rimes??

So I'm sitting here during my lunch break, and I'm thinking about how last night was a typical evening in the Strohman household.  We arrived home from work/daycare, and I immediately went outside and fired up the grill to cook some hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner.  My wife made the hamburger patties, and we bought some Chicago-style hot dogs that we wanted to try.  Thunder rumbled in the distance, but the skies overhead were mostly clear, and so I cooked outside and my wife and I put together a nice little dinner.  I can’t say I liked the Chicago-style dogs all that much, but I did pick one of the first jalapenos from my little garden, sliced it up, and put it on my burger, and boy was that tasty.  And spicy!  Yum!

As we were chowing down, the topic of wormholes and black holes came up, and so I went on ad nauseam about what they are, the science behind them, the implications if they do/do not exist, etc.  My wife always has trouble understanding space-time, and so I think she walked away from it with a clearer picture and maybe even perhaps a better view of what it’s like to live with my brain (hahaha), as I’m always thinking about weird crap like time travel, alternate dimensions, mind control, etc.

After that I rummaged around for my art supplies and began working on the cover of my latest finished novel, Terminal Restraint.  I went back to my bedroom in search of some peace and quiet while drawing, but it didn’t take long for Adam Bomb to come rushing in, wreaking nuclear havoc on my plans.  I actually got him to draw alongside me for maybe, oh, 30 seconds, but then he wanted to climb on me.  Yeah, it’s a little difficult to sketch when a three year old is using you as a jungle gym.  After tossing him off of me and grumbling at him for about fifteen minutes, he switched tactics, instead wanting me to don his Spider-man mask and Hulk hands—I guess I was Spider-Hulk—and fight him.  He’s been on this kick about wearing his Captain America or Spider-man pajamas as soon as he gets home, and his Uncle Anthony bought him a Spider-man ski-mask and gloves to complete his ensemble, and so he was all decked out and ready to go.  Suffice it to say, I didn’t get much drawing done, although I have the overall concept down and started working on shading and coloring.

How does Leann Rimes tie into all of this?  I'm getting there...

From there I played some games of SongPop on my phone with my wife.  I absolutely detest that game.  It probably wouldn’t be so bad if I played it on my tablet, which I think I’ll try tonight, but my fat fingers are always pressing the wrong choices on my phone, and in the few weeks we’ve been playing it, my wife has just obliterated me.  I think, at least at the time of this post, she’s winning 34 to 17.  Apparently she’s really good against everyone else she plays, so if you are up for a challenge, request to play her.  She’s even beating me in genres that I absolutely know more about than she does, i.e., metal, industrial, and punk.  Even TV show theme songs!  Grrr…

I wrapped up the evening watching A.J. Burnett of the Pittsburgh Pirates try to pitch a no-hitter.  My wife wanted me to turn off the TV so that we could go to bed, and so I had to explain the importance of a no-hitter to her.  Of course, AJ gave up one measly run to a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning after the umpire failed to recognize two previous close pitches as strikes.  The Buccos still won though!  Let’s Go Bucs!  Anyway, I turned it off as soon as the game was over and fell asleep within minutes.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Who cares, right?  Well, I do have a point to my madness.

Yesterday I was reading an article about Leann Rimes, who I admittedly know very little about.  I do know she is a country singer, I think she was rather young when she first met stardom, and I might have heard that she maybe had an affair with some guy that was on CSI: Miami and, I think, possibly married him?  Other than that, I couldn’t name one of her songs or even come remotely close to guessing her work on SongPop.  Grrr…hate that game.  But anyway, in this article they were describing her tweets regarding some emergency dental issues she was having.  She supposedly had to have an emergency root canal done, it was extremely painful, and she posted all about it on Twitter.  I read the article, read her tweets, thought to myself “so what??”, and then I read the comments underneath...

Man, people freakin' HATE Leann Rimes!

I realize that most of the vitriol you read in Internet comments are typically entered by spiteful, loathsome people, but some of these were extreme—saying she should have all of her teeth knocked out by a flying brick and other such hateful verbiage.  I don’t know what Leann Rimes did to these people, and I don’t know why people feel so inclined to post such negative comments, but I feel sorry for the poor woman!  And it also got me thinking…

Why do we care so much about other people, so much so that we will spend five minutes reading their tweets or blogs about their daily lives...wait, err...let me rephrase that.  Why do we care so much about celebrities?  Why are we so fascinated with every aspect of their lives?  TMZ.com has become huge, and People magazine has been around since the 70’s and is still going strong.  Twitter has become a huge stomping ground for celebs, and they all have hundreds of thousands of followers.  Why?

I’m a regular on Twitter and I have to admit that I follow close to a hundred celebrities (not Leann Rimes though).  I do always get a kick out of how normal some of them are.  Take Wil Wheaton, for example, who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation and has a recurring role as himself on The Big Bang Theory.  That guy tweets about his love for video games, brewing his own beer, etc., and he just seems so...normal (albeit this is coming from me, a geek).  Others like DJ Pauly D and Simon Pegg and Kal Penn are just the same.

I just find it amusing that we are so interested in everyone else’s life.  Chalk it up to plain curiosity, or perhaps it’s the competitive nature in humans, and we just want to see how everyone else is living to see if we—or they—are “normal”.  Call it whatever you want, but wouldn’t we be happier if we focused more on our own lives rather than what everyone else is doing?  I’m not trying to drive away my readers, but I just think sometimes we concern ourselves too much with the thoughts/actions/feelings/gardens/facial hair of others.  I love sitting and talking with people, listening to their little anecdotes and life stories, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.  When people sit at a computer, read tweets or news concerning said tweets from a celebrity, and then write hateful statements in the comments, well, that’s a problem.  Am I right?  I mean, if that's what you consider a productive use of your time, I really think you need to get a life.  Go to a library or a church function or join a running group or something and meet some new people.  Take up a new hobby like sketching or playing with your kids or playing SongPop or whatever.

Who is with me on this???

Money Doesn't Buy Happiness

I came to the realization this weekend that I’d be a millionaire if I didn’t have kids.

It all started when I got this idea to move my son’s toy box from the area he plays in at the side of our living room to his bedroom.  When we added on to our dinky house several years ago, we put in a closet by the front door and a closet in his bedroom, and so sandwiched between them is a window and the perfect spot for a toy box.  I have no idea why I've never actually moved his toy box there, but the opportunity presented itself this weekend, and so I slid that extremely heavy thing across the house and deposited right in that spot under the window, where it fit perfectly.

Then I wanted to take some of his old toys and especially the baby toys and put them in a box for when baby number 2 arrives in January.  BTW, names have been picked for baby number 2, but they will be disclosed at a later date.  Anyway, as I started rummaging through his toy box, I began organizing everything into little piles.  After a half hour, I had a pile of toys from one end of his room to the other, and as I started to calculate the cost of all those toys in my head, I think I nearly had a heart attack.  A Batman train set here, a Matchbox car track there along with a full shoe box of Matchbox cars.  Tons of stuffed Marvel characters.  Tons of little action figures.  I think when I reached over $1000, I stopped counting—and I still had three quarters of the room to go!

But we were out shopping for a gift for one of his daycare friends over the weekend, and in Toys R Us I spotted Muno from Yo Gabba Gabba.  I picked him up, showed him to my son, and I saw the biggest smile on his face that I’ve ever seen.  Yeah, the thing cost $25, but we've been looking for this thing everywhere, and I think his smile was really worth more than that.  On the way out though, I spent $2 and won him a Batman stuffed doll out of the crane machine.  Again, another huge smile, much to my chagrin at having already purchased the $25 one.  We’d actually debated on returning Muno, and I had this plan of stashing him in our spare room for a few days to see if Adam Bomb would even remember us buying him.  Of course as soon as we got home, he wanted Muno and Batman so that he could show his Grammy his new toys.  Yeah, what was I thinking?  He’s way too intelligent to out-smart now.  Heck, when we left the Toys R Us shopping plaza and I made a right on red, he started shouting, “Red means stop, Daddy!  You went on red!”  Maybe other three-year-olds are just as attentive, but I’m seriously awed by him each and every day.  But we ended up keeping the $25 Muno, and I swore that I wouldn't buy any more toys for him until the holidays!  Really!

I could have been driving around a new 2013 Dodge Ram, or we could have moved into a much larger house by now.  I could have bought my Harley Heritage Softail Classic that I've had my eyes on since selling my old crappy Suzuki several years ago.  I could have gone back to school to get my MBA, which I'll do eventually.  Or I could have just saved it all up.  So yes, I may have been a millionaire if I didn’t have kids.  But you know, I remember those days without my little Adam Bomb, and I honestly can say that the past 3.16 years have been the most fun of my entire life.  And with another little one on the way, well, I may spend oodles more spoiling him or her, and I’ll love every minute of it.  I may have to wait until the 2025 edition of the Heritage Softwail Classic comes out (if my loving wife will even LET me buy it then), but in the meantime I'll have more than enough fun things to do with my happy little family.

Busy Summer Bees!

Summers are always busy.  It’s the way life works, I guess.  All winter long you sit in the house, watching the falling snow (or lack thereof) in the freezing cold temperatures.  As soon as it warms up though, you are itching to get outside and go for walks and fix up your yard.  And then all the summer activities begin.

Last weekend was a busy one.  We started our Saturday waking up at 6:30 AM for a 5K at the Blair County/People’s Natural Gas Ballpark.  This was my wife’s third 5k, and my zeroth.  Seriously, my son and I just sat in the stands and watched.

Someday I will run one with her.  I really try not to make excuses for myself, and I was to the point last September where I could do a 5k on my own in under 40 minutes, but then I gained a little weight back over the winter and then sprained my ankle severely a couple of months ago by stepping in a hole in my back yard.  As you can tell from my last post though, I’m back to running again, so maybe by this September I’ll be fit and able to do one with her.  Hopefully!

Anyway, my wife and four-hundred plus others ran around the outfield of the ballpark, then took to the streets outside, did a few laps, and then ran back inside to finish.  She didn’t do as well as she would have liked, but it ended up being a quarter mile longer than the 3.11 miles.  I guess they really REALLY wanted the runners to have the opportunity to run laps inside the ballpark.  Anyway, it was a nice experience both as a spectator and as a runner, as my wife would attest.  She was one tired little lady afterwards, but Daddy and Adam were proud of her!

From there we went to the Blair County Arts Festival at Penn State Altoona, although by that time my son was ready for a nap and was rather grumpy.  We walked around, saw some ducklings at the pond, checked out the craft vendors, and ate some of the carnival-style food (hot dogs, gyros, fries, shaved ice).  We typically go every year, although when my son fell asleep with his head on my shoulder, our little excursion ended rather abruptly.  If you live close to the area and have never been there, I suggest you go next year.  They usually have it during the middle of May.

Later on that night we went to see the Avengers at the drive-in in Portage.  My son, who will be three in a couple of weeks, did fairly well for his first big-screen movie.  There were times when he preferred to inspect the parts of the car he’s never able to while strapped into his car seat, but for the most part he sat and watched the movie.  He loves the Marvel characters, and the scenes with Hulk especially caught his eye.

Drive-ins never quite amount to the same viewing experience as watching in a movie theater or in your own home, mostly because people never can seem to follow the headlight rules, and you inevitably have someone parked near you who is blabbering away about “Dina and Tina,” as was the case with us that night.  Still, we enjoyed the movie, are looking forward to seeing it on Blu-ray at home, and now we know that our son can possibly, hopefully, maybe sit through a movie in a real movie theater.  Fingers crossed!

Over the course of the next couple weeks we are visiting relatives in northern Pennsylvania, hoping to check out the Kinzua Bridge/Sky Walk while we are there.  If you don’t know anything about it, check it out:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinzua_Bridge.  It's a very interesting part of Pennsylvania history.  We also have an aunt’s wedding shower that my wife and mom are attending, my son’s birthday, and then in July we are heading to the beach for a week.  Fun times ahead for certain!

Of course, this doesn’t really leave me much time for writing and blogging, but that’s OK.  I realized after an afternoon spent on the golf course a few weeks ago that I actually do look better with a bit of a tan--not so sick and zombie/vampire-like.  I think I need to build a patio out behind my house so that I can sit out there on the weekends and evenings after work and write to my heart’s content on my tablet, rather than sitting inside at my desk.  Heck, maybe I just need to buck up and sit in the grass for the time being.  Anything is better than being inside on a pleasant summer day.

Even though I'm more of a fall/winter type of person, I'm really looking forward to this summer.  I’m not naturally fond of being too busy, but that’s because I sit on my butt watching TV too much.  Luckily the summer TV schedule has me feeling rather blasé (with the exception of Big Brother and True Blood), so hopefully we’ll get outside and enjoy life a little bit.  Maybe dust off and tune up the bikes, or perhaps make an impromptu weekend trip to Pittsburgh or NYC or Delaware.  Maybe we'll check out a zoo or roadside attraction as well.  Whatever it is that we end up doing, I’m looking forward to it!

So how about you?  What fun things have you planned this summer?  Any suggestions?

Don't Make Me Mad!

Last night, after a nice and relaxing forty-five minutes at the park walking and playing in the little playground there, I went home and did some self-reflecting.  It wasn’t easy, considering my son’s energy must not have been fully expended by that point as he was jumping on the bed and hitting me with pillows.  But as I sat there, mindlessly watching Celebrity Apprentice that I’d recorded on the DVR and fending off multiple polyester-filled missiles, my thoughts turned to that of self-assessment.

I realized that I really couldn’t be happier.  Sure I could always use more money, a bigger house, and a better wardrobe.  I’d love to get an in-ground swimming pool.  Heck, I’d love to just quit my job and spend hours and hours every day with my son, relaying to him the abundance of mostly useless knowledge I have stored up in my noggin.  He’ll be three in a couple of weeks, and sometimes I feel like I’ve missed a lot of opportunities with him being in daycare all day long.  Then again, there are some dads out there that travel for work, only seeing their kids a couple of nights a week, and those guys miss out on a lot more than I do.

But yeah, I’m a pretty happy guy.  I don’t have many problems.  I mean, yeah, I could always be in better shape.  We are planning a trip to the beach this summer, and a couple of my trip companions are concerned about their beach bodies.  I think I’m personally less concerned with my body image as I am with my overall health.  As far as my physique goes, my son says I look like the Hulk.  I laugh, thinking I probably look more like the Blob.  Hopefully my skin doesn’t have a greenish tint to it that I’m not aware of.  And I hope he doesn’t dwell on the rare times I get angry.  Everyone gets upset every once in a while, some more often than others, but I try to limit it as much as possible around him.  I don’t want him growing up in an environment where yelling is normal and accepted.  I try to laugh and be humorous with him as much as possible.  I’m also a pretty mellow guy by nature, so that helps.

Some people aren’t, though.  A couple of months ago, during the early evening hours, I just happened to look out the window and saw some guy pull over on the side of the road right across from my house.  He got out, walked around to the other side of his car, dragged a six-year-old kid out of the back seat, and began “paddling” him senselessly.  The kid was screaming and crying, and the guy tossed him back in, then came back to the other side and did the same with what appeared to be a four-year-old.  At that point I was up, down the hallway, and was standing outside my front door with my arms crossed, glaring at him.  He glanced over at me with a fury-filled, beat-red (as opposed to beet-red) face, said absolutely nothing, got in the car and sped off down the road as if nothing had happened.  I can’t say it was child abuse, as he did only smack them on their behinds, but there was something in his demeanor and the viciousness of the paddling that made me think that wasn’t the first or last of his temper.

I guess some people just aren’t meant to have children.  Perhaps conception was an accident, or maybe they were just careless.  Maybe a sixteen-year-old female, on the advice of her thirty-two-year-old mother, told her boyfriend she was taking birth control but wasn’t, hoping to get pregnant so that she could force him and his family to pay child support, just as her mother had done before her.  Or maybe they really did want kids, but their own upbringing was so screwed up that they don’t know how to raise them.  Or maybe a parent just snapped, just one blue-moon moment where that guy just couldn’t take it any longer, but instead of working through his anger calmly on his own, he unfortunately decided to take it out on his kids.  Who knows?

Some people turn their anger inward on themselves.  They wallow in their misery, hoping for a pity party from anyone who will listen to them.  Some of these cases may be legitimate illnesses such as depression or bipolar disorder, but many just seem to live their lives crying “why me?” while the world passes them by.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve read Facebook posts or Tweets by people complaining about their lives or their problems.  I feel so sorry for those people—not because they have love-life issues or that they are crazy busy while suffering from a migraine.  I pity them because they use social media to air their problems, because they don’t seem to have anyone else in their lives to talk to, and because they refuse to focus and see all the positive things in their lives rather than dwelling on the negative.

I’m sure those same people would look at me and say, “Well, you don’t know me, Ryan.  You don’t know what I have to deal with.”  But that’s the unequivocal and grandiose problem and answer right there.  Why are you comparing yourself to me?  Why do you think the grass is greener in my lawn?  Yeah, I did use Scott’s TurfBuilder, but I did it because I had a huge dandelion problem—not to play Keeping Up with the Joneses.  Yeah, possibly I make more money than you, but there are a lot of people out there that make a lot more money than me.  Yeah, maybe I don’t have your health problems, but I’ve had my fair share of them—including a broken skull, ruptured appendix, etc.  We could go back and forth all day, and what would it accomplish?  Would you be any happier?  Probably not. 

Take a serious look at your life and ask yourself what you have to be thankful for.  I’m certain you’ll find more than you realize.  And when you do, embrace it.  Cherish it.  Open the curtains and the windows and breathe in a nice big breath of fresh air.  Go for a walk or even a run if you are physically able.  I think you’ll find, if you do that, that your life really isn’t all that bad.  And if you really do have a serious issue in your life that you are dealing with or need to deal with, perhaps that newfound positive vibe will help you tackle it.  Because I can assure you, the “woe is me” attitude won’t.

And remember, being angry at the world doesn't solve anything either.  Not only does it raise your blood pressure and put you at risk for serious health issues (like getting your butt kicked), but it wastes your time and energy that could be better spent enjoying life or improving yourself.  Besides, you look pretty silly with that angry face.  Right?  Yeah, who are you kidding?

What's a parent to do?

So my son is 2 years and 7 months old. He is not potty-trained yet. We've purchased everything there is to purchase, it seems, in an attempt to get him potty-trained. We have a Marvel Superhero's toilet seat, a stool, a separate potty, flushable wipes, books depicting Elmo and others using the potty, etc. Every time we try to take him to the potty, though, he screams "No potty!"  He is physically able to do it, but I think the potty just scares him.  Any time we even mention using it, he gets antsy to the point of tears.

We had yet to discuss this with his pediatrician, and that will most likely be our next step, but first we decided to try a rigorous potty-training boot camp over the holiday weekends when he was home from day-care.  The first day did not go well at all, with two trips to the bathroom and him just kicking and screaming.  On the second day, we ran into somewhat of a brick wall.  The poor little guy had been developing not one but two chalazia in his right upper eyelid.  A chalazion is like a stye on the inside of your eyelid, and even though he wasn’t complaining much about it, his poor eyelid had swelled up to the point where his eye bore a slight resemblance to a pickled egg.  We took him to the pediatrician as soon as we could get him in, the holiday schedule making it difficult, and of course the doctor just prescribed eye drops and told us they'd have to schedule him with a pediatric ophthalmologist.  Naturally the ophthalmologist couldn't see us for two weeks, and so now we’re just waiting it out and trying to treat it with the eye drops and warm compresses.

I love being a dad, and I pride myself on the great relationship I have with my son--reading with him, playing games on the Wii, teaching him everything I know in short little age-appropriate bursts of information, egging him on when he's picking on Mommy, etc., and so you can imagine the heartbreak I feel when I have to physically hold him down to put these eye drops and warm compresses on his eye.  If he had claws like an animal or Wolverine, I’d be finished in seconds.  He screams and flails and punches, says "oww" and "it hurts!"  I know it's not physically painful, but to him and his limited vocabulary, that's how he expresses it, and I feel like my heart just thumps out of my chest and falls to the floor with a dull thud each and every time I have to do this to my little man.

I remember when my wife first became pregnant, and everyone gave us all of this advice on parenting and what to do when this or that happens and blah blah blah.  My in-laws, who hail from Vietnam, had very different and sometimes drastic and bizarre ways of doing things, including my mother-in-law’s stye remedy.  It involved rubbing your CLEAN index finger vigorously against the palm of your opposite hand for 30 seconds until it became warm and then immediately applying it to the affected area.  She swore up and down (literally cursing at us while standing up and sitting down) that it worked, and when you consider that it really is something like a warm compress, I could see the logic.  She’s half-Chinese, and her father actually owned a kung fu school and monastery where she learned Chinese herbal medicine while growing up, so there had to be some validity to her therapy.  Anyway, we’ve tried that as well, but even it hasn’t had much (if any) effect on his poor eye.

We'll get to potty-training soon, but until we see the ophthalmologist, I can't torture the little guy with putting eye drops in and making him use the potty.  One thing at a time.