The Wrong Way

Mental Note: Don't spend all night in the club on Saturday night and think that anything good is going to happen at 9:43am on Sunday when you're at church.

My Daddy always told me, (and I know there is a more poetic way to say this, but remember, I'm home grown.... so i give it to you raw and you can cook it any way you want) He said, "It is better to have a person think you're a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Now I think that is a quote from Benjamin Franklin.... But then, again, I don't listen to Ben Franklin, do I?

I listen to my Daddy... And, yes, I call him my Daddy even though I am a 34 year old guy... Once someone is your Daddy... they are always your Daddy.

I spent the first 18 years of my life thinking he was an idiot.... I will spend the rest of my life knwing that, in regards to the rest of the world, he is the wisest man I know.

But even now, I remember how odd his teaching styles were, and what they taught me, to be the man that I am, and I hope to raise my boys with the same technigue.

My Daddy taught me to look both ways before crossing the street, and later let go of my bicycle seat while he was running beside me in the MIDDLE of the street and yelled to me as I'm doing 30mph towards a highway intersection, "Remember to use your BRAKES!"

For those of you that know this story, I stopped, just feet from the Highway "T" intersection, by utilizing my instinctual talent, in that I turned the bike into the curb and flipped over the handlebars.

I ended up sprawled on the sidewalk and my Daddy standing over me saying, "You just pedal backwards... that's the brakes."

I thanked him for telling me this for the first time and I rode a bike like a pro from then on.