Keeping your priorities in the right order

For Obama and McCain, politics is still not their number one priority. At least that's what one might hope if they know what's good for them.

A patient and I had a discussion about "priorities". It was what seems like ions ago now, but there was one thing she said that I will never forget.

She said, "In life, if you don't have your priorities straight, nothing ever works out. If you you do not have your priorities straight, you will not succeed in your life."

She put her thumb up. "This is God. He is your number one priority. This pointer finger is your wife. This middle finger is your children. The ring finger is other people. And, least but not least, this pinky finger is other things.

"Now," she continued, "If you get these priorities out of place, nothing seems to work properly." She placed her thumb between her pointer and ring finger. If you place God after your wife and before your children, you can't grip anything." She placed her thumb between the middle finger and ring finger. "If you place your thumb here, you still can't get a grip on anything.

"See," she opened up her hand, and gripped mine with hers, "the only way you can really grip things, have control of the things in your life, is to put your thumb before your other fingers. God, in essence, is like your thumb. If you have no God in your life, nothing works right.

"The same is true if you get other things in your life out of proper order. You must love your wife before your children, and love your children before other people. But you must always put other people before other things."

I told my priest about this before I was married, and he loved it so much that he used it during our wedding ceremony. Not only that, but he told me he also used it during Mass.

So, that in mind, I thought I would take the time to list the priorities in my life. Perhaps you might do the same -- just for fun.

1. God (however my relationship here is private)
2. My wife
3. My 2.5 children
4. My parents and siblings and nieces and nephews
5. My aunts and uncles and cousins
6. My friends
7. My co-workers
8. My love of country (sure, I'd fight if I was asked)
9. My job (way down here)
10. My Column (it doesn't provide the benefits)
11. My home (without the above I would not have it)
12. Family entertainment
13. Sleep
14. Golf
15. Baseball (I love this sport, particularly the Detroit Tigers)
16. Football, Basketball, Hockey
17. Reading (which includes the news and any books)
18. The Respiratory Therapy Cave
19. Reading medblogs
20. Freadom Nation and politics
21. Reading political blogs
22. Material things

It's important to remind ourselves of these priorities, because when they get out of order, things simply do not work, as I learned quickly after I was married when I had to move golf way down on the list, and had to quit collecting baseball cards.

However, I've found a way enjoying cards vicariously through my son. If I buy him the cards, I find that my priorities stay in the right order.

So you can see why this political blog and blogging tends to take a back seat to all the other "things" in my life. While I love blogging, and reading blogs, I can just barely squeeze the little bit I do into my packed schedule.

The only thing I didn't list here is health. There's this old saying that the Customer Comes First. I always debated against this old theory, considering that if I'm dead, the customer would have no one to talk with.

Therefore, I suppose one might put health at #2. However, I think you'd be justified in putting your wife and kids before your own health. You know the old saying: Women and children first. It bodes well.

This is just a thought anyway.

I'm flawed, and occasionally I do get things out of order. And every time I have to suffer the consequences of doing so. But since I know of the importance of prioritizing, things usually get straightened out in the end -- so far.

But, you know, I see people every day who don't seem to have their priorities in order. I see this every day when I turn on the TV and learn about women like Winona Rider who put material items before other people. She ended up in jail you know.

Or the famous people who get divorced because the husband put some other woman before his wife, or vice versal. And sometimes we read about divorces that were the result of one person putting money before his spouse and kids.

My wife and I have to remind each other when we don't have our priorities in order. She grumbles sometimes that "All you do is sit at the computer all day."

Right now, for example my kids are sitting on the couch while I'm doing this, and I feel guilty about it. So, as you now understand, I have to go.

We all survived in a time before laws

There is a new law in Shoreline. For now on, any person who jumps off the Pier will be sited and forced to attend personal accountability classes -- if you get caught. Or, better yet, if you don't drown.

"Well, we aren't actually going to enforce this law," one commissioner said (paraphrasing), "but if we happen to see someone jumping off the pier, or climbing up onto the pier, we're going to site the parties involved."

I understand the intent behind this law: it is to try to force kids, or any adult dumb enough to try this, to think twice before jumping off the pier.

"The theory here is that someone has to jump in first. And, just to be cool, other kids are jumping in. And there have been five deaths as a result, we think, of people jumping off the pier in the past couple summers.

"After that first kid jumps in, we want the other kids to think twice about how irresponsible what that first kid did. And how irresponsible it will be for him or her to to the same."

I understand it's a noble idea, but I highly doubt a bunch of kids are going to be sitting around thinking about getting caught. In fact, such a law might make it more exciting. Part of the joy in jumping off the pier is the joy in knowing you are doing something risky.

There are signs on the pier that say, "This pier is for official business only and not for public use. Proceed at your own risk." As I look out there when I'm driving by the beach on a warm summer day, I see many people who completely ignore this sign.

Of course I know the purpose of that sign is to remove any liability of the county in regards to someone having an accident while being on the pier, or "accidentally" falling off.

When I was a kid I did things far "stupider" than jumping off the pier. Once I was walking across a bridge over the Mitton River which was way high over the river --scary high. And one of my friends said, "Let's jump in."

"Um," one of us said, "Isn't it kind of high."

"I know people who have jumped off before. I think it's safe."

"I don't know," I said. I was afraid of heights also, and I was praying that my friends would decide against the idea and just keep walking, but before I could even finish my sentence, Robby

jumped in.

We all stood on top, leaning over just slightly, and waited, hoped, prayed that he would come back to the surface with his whole body intact.

He did. And then my other friends jumped in behind him. So, having no choice unless I wanted to be the only "chicken," I jumped in. And I know for a fact that my feet hit bottom, and I propelled myself to the surface.

I look back and think how stupid that was, and how any one of us could have died that day. None of us would have made it past our 18th birthdays. Even so, I climbed back onto the track, as did my friends, and jumped off two more times. How is that for irresponsible?

We all survived. Was there a law against jumping off the bridge? I didn't know nor did I care. None of us cared. All we wanted was a little fun and excitement.

Would I want my kids to do the same? Absolutely not. Will I encourage my kids to not do something stupid like that? Absolutely.

Did my wife ever jump off the peir when she was a kid? She did. She was just as much of a risk taker as any other teenager. So I suppose, unless we turn out to be exceptionally great parents, there's little hope our two kids will not do something like this. And if we're anything like our parents, we might just encourage it (then again, it wasn't against the law when we were kids either).

I remember my dad and uncle used to encourage us kids to jump into the Mitton river and ride the currents through the huge tubes under the road. If we couldn't manage to stop ourselves by grabbing onto a stump or some grass on the opposite end of the tube, who knows what would have happened to us.

My dad and uncle jumped right in with us. It was fun. There might even have been snakes in the tubes riding the waves with us. That just kind of added to the excitement.

When we were kids we used to stand up in the front seat while our parents drove. I remember once mom telling me how I fell asleep standing up in the car.

When we went on long trips when we were kids mom would put a playpen in the back of the station wagon for my baby brother to sleep in. I remember sleeping on the floor, or over the back seat.

In 1981 and 1985 dad drove us to Florida in a van, and instead of encouraging us to buckle up, he made the back into a huge bed and we enjoyed the ride that way, watching TV and playing games while lying on our stomachs.

Nonetheless, we all survived.

Grandma's quilt

Jane, my coworker, said that she woke up in the middle of the night unable to get back to sleep and came up with a great idea for a title for her autobiography: “Up Hill Both Ways.”

“Why would you call it that?” I asked.

“Because when I was a kid we had to go up hill both ways to school and back home,” she said. Then she explained why she had to go up hill both ways, but I couldn’t tell you what she said. Well, I could make it up, though.

I’ve been telling Joella for years she should write a book, and she keeps telling me she will. But she hasn’t. I’m completely honest when I tell you she is one of the smartest people I have ever known, and I think she could easily harness that brilliance into a book.

“I’m going to,” she said, “I’m going to sit down one of these days and write a book.”

I said, “At least a short story.”

That was two years ago. Now she tells me she’s going to write her autobiography “one of these days.”

I remember grandma, back in 1997 when she was first diagnosed with MSA, telling me that there were so many things she wanted to do that she couldn’t possibly do them all. She took me into her living room and showed me an old quilt she had picked up at a yard sale.

“I love to fix up quilts,” she said, “But I’m probably not going to be able to fix this one.” Her muscles had just started to become feeble at this time, and she was finding herself less and less able to do the things she loved to do -- like sew.

“It’s sad,” she added, “That someone would throw something like this away. Someone worked so hard at making this quilt and all it needs is a little TLC. I know if I don’t finish it, it will probably end up in the trash.”

She never did finish it.

When I was in high school, grandma and grandpa lived just a block away from the school, so I’d go there for lunch nearly every day. One day I went there and grandma told me to leave, drive around the block, and go pick up the chair in front of the neighbors house.

“They’re getting rid of it because it has a leg missing, but it’ll give grandpa something to do.”

At first I didn’t understand what she was talking about, but then she took me out the side door, and pointed to the neighbors front yard. They had a bunch of junk out there for the annual spring garbage pick-up, and, among the junk, was the old chair she described.

I hopped in my car, backed out of the driveway, drove to her neighbors, tossed the chair in the back seat of my 1980 Dodge Charger (my first car), and drove back to grandmas. As I write this, I can picture grandma laughing at my naivety at that moment.

“I wanted you to drive around the block so they wouldn’t know it was me who took it,” she said, smiling.

“Oh,” I said.

I took the chair out, and set it on the ground. She inspected it. It was an old rocker, and not only was one of the legs missing, the seat was missing. “Grandpa can fix this,” she assured me.

I am sitting on that chair right now as I write this. Grandpa had cut off the rocking parts, whittled a seat, and turned this into a really nice chair. That was his hobby after he retired.

Many times I remember spending the night at grandma’s, and she’d get me up very early in the morning. We’d be at yard sales when there was dew still on the grass, and a chill in the air. She’d buy old dolls, antique bird cages, old picture frames, antique bottles, lamps, cuckoo clocks, and lots and lots of books. You know, all that stuff people have no use for any more.

"One person’s junk is another person’s treasure," the old addage goes.

My grandma treasured many things. Or, as she’d probably say, she "appreciated" them. She’d see something that looked like a bunch of junk to me, take it home, and incorporate it into her own personal museum that was her home -- her hobby.

And she loved books.

“It’s a shame someone would ever throw away a book,” she once told me.

That’s one of the things I loved most about grandma is how she appreciated things. She’d go to yard sales and pick up other people’s junk and put in among her collection of antiques and make her house look so cool. Yes: my grandma could make junk look cool.

One of the running jokes in my family is that grandma had this nice collection of antiques in her house, and it looked cool, but everything she had had a crack in it. Many times you couldn’t tell just by looking at it, but upon further examination you’d find the flaw.

A few days ago I found an old book among a collection of grandma’s things dad and his sisters had put into his garage and were in the process of going through. Aunt M. told me I could take any books I wanted, so I took a book from the 1880s called “Ben Hurr.” Upon further inspection of the book, however, I found the cover was loose.

If it weren’t for my grandma this book would have been in the trash 30 years ago. Now, if not for me, it would be thrown in the trash again. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it though, considering I don’t have any furniture to set it on.

Jane thought it was cool when I showed it to her the other day at work, the same day she told me about her “Up Hill Both Ways” idea. I sure hope Jane’s book doesn’t go the way of grandma’s quilt.

Copy write © Rick Frea 2007. All rights reserved

Learning how to parent from the best

We can only parent to the best of our abilities and no more. While our ultimate goal is to be a friend to our children, we still have to be a parent.

I'm always thinking about how or where to draw that fine line.

I like to read all sorts of things, and so does my son. And, since he shares many of the same interests as me, I thought about giving him "The O'Reilly Factor for Kids" for Christmas.

Yesterday I found the book in the library, and decided to read it before my son did. So I hadnded it to the librarian.

"Let me know what you think of it," she said as she glanced at the cover.

"I will," I said.

"I know some people think he's a little to short or blunt for their tastes."

"I think he reminds me of my grandparents."

She smirked and went about her business.

Now I've decided I will not give it to my son for Christmas.

I got home and left the book lying on the couch. When he saw it he said, "I hope you didn't get that book for me for Christmas, because I'm not reading it."

I didn't know if he was being serious or not, but I decided to heed his warning.

I read it anyway. And decided that there are two other reasons I don't think he's ready to read it. First, O'Reilly talks about things -- like sex -- that I think my 9-year-old is not ready for yet. Second, I don't want my son to feel like I'm lecturing him via this book.

Regardless, I read the book myself. In this book, more so than his others, O'Reilly certainly does remind me of my grandparents.

I remember when I was a kid going to my grandparents, and the TV was never on. I never even asked to turn it on because grandma would be sure to find something else for me to do, if she hadn't done that already.

"There are better things you can do with your time," she'd say.

She'd always have us coloring or drawing in a notebook. Once, while she was cooking dinner, she had me and my brothers running around her Victorian home counting doors. I don't know that we ever got an accurate count.

Another time I was bored she took me to the store and bought me a notebook. "I want you to write in here all your thoughts," she said. I'm convinced that's why I still write today.

Sometimes she'd take me to her library and show me books on the history of Shoreline, or she'd simply take me to the library and wait patiently while I mulled over which book to take out.

As I was reading the chapter on "TV" in O'Reilly's book, he very much reminded me of grandma.

He writes, "I make my living on the tube because I want to talk about people who cheat and people who get cheated. I want to talk about ideas. I want people who watch my program to think, even if they disagree with me."

Then he added, "But most TV is not designed to make anyone think... it's designed to give you dumb ideas so that you will spend your money on stupid products and never learn to think for yourself."

He writes, as my grandma once lectured in her own pithy way, that TV is good if you are watching it to dull your mind for a short time, and it's good if you are watching something that will educate your mind and get you to think about things, but either way "TV is only good for you if you control it. It's a powerful tool. Use it. don't let it use you."

This morning I found myself telling my son to clean up his mess in the kitchen, to quit watching TV. "If you have time to watch TV then you have time to pick up your room. Pick up the clothes that are all over the floor. If you don't do it, mom will have to."

He picked up the clothes, and then I had him clean up his papers and books from the kitchen table. He cleaned parts of it and was back to watching TV. I was about to have him finish up, but his mom took over:

"Get away from the TV," she said, "and get your hair combed." Once that was done he was loafing around again, and she chimed in, "Come on! Get your stuff ready for school. Robert, come on! This is getting old. I have to tell you the same things every day. You're old enough to do all this stuff without being told."

I didn't say anything more to him because I didn't want to come at him from all angles. Believe it or not, I remember when I was a kid.

I didn't mind it when my parents or grandparents give me their advice, or a pithy lecture. Often times these are the one's I'd think about most, and more often than not incorporate them. Most of the time my family didn't say much and hoped that we'd learn from their real life example. But, when that didn't work, we got the pithy talk.

Except for my mother. She'd sometimes go on and on and on and on. Okay, so I'd rather get a spanking from dad and be done with it.

So I had to say something to my son. I didn't want to, but I knew it had to be done. It would have been far easier to say something like, "Remember why your mom got mad this morning?"

"Yes," he'd say.

"Well, don't do it again." Done. There that was easy.

That doesn't always work. It does on Home Improvement, but not in reality.

I looked at the clock. I would give myself 30 seconds. I took a deep breath:

"Robert, your getting to the age in your life where you need to figure out that things you don't do someone else will." I waited for his response; I didn't want to get ahead of myself and confuse him.

"What?" he said.

"Well, if you leave your clothes on the floor, your mother will have to pick them up. When you leave your clothes inside out, your mother will have to put them right side in."

I paused. He said nothing.

"When you leave your stuff on the table, mom or I will have to put it away for you."

I paused again. He said nothing.

"When you don't brush your hair or get your stuff ready in the morning, mom or I will have to make sure you do."

I paused. He said nothing.

"I don't really care if your room is clean, so I don't bug you about that. But your room being messy says a lot about you, Jasper. It makes you look sloppy. If you want to keep a messy room that's fine. It's your life.

"All I'm saying," I continued, knowing I'd better wrap this up soon, "Is that you should start thinking about this kind of stuff."

I looked at the clock: 45 seconds. I thought of more to say, but my time was up.

"You have a great day at school," I said as I pull up to the curb.

"I will dad," he smiled. He showed no ill effects to the lecture.

We're still pals. Cool.