There comes a time in every man’s life when they realize everyone they ever counted on was probably just winging it. One personal memory of that idea is when my toddler child wanted to do something. I can’t recall the thing my kid wanted to do but I recall the eyes of an infant looking at me for permission. Was it allowed? Was it not allowed?
I had absolutely no opinion in the matter. Yet I was required to make a call… right then. “Holy shit! I’m a parent and an adult and I need to decide if I’m going to let this kid do this thing and I have no idea!” Talk about stress! If the kid turns out to be a serial killer will it all come down to that one time you let him stick a Ninja Turtle sock in his hat next to the gross half eaten cookie?
Who knows what leads to what? I made a guess, the kid complied, and the rule was made.
I had no other choice; children need to know what’s allowed and what’s not. (Actually, adults too but that’s another story.) I can’t recall my decision but I remember thinking “great, now I’ve created precedent… I need to remember this bullshit decision so that future bullshit decisions form a coherent whole”.
All parents go through this learning curve. We soon realize our parents did the same thing. It has always been so.
Enough with the Hallmark moment crap… in my next post I’ll scale up to the whole damn world.
You do what is right and move on…
Been there, done that, worn the t-shirt out. LOL. You often are surprised as you learn to “parent”…
Sometimes you do well, other times … you wish you could do over, often almost immediately. Too many people just don’t give a damn and that’s the real problem.
My url of fordfe.info is rejected. WTF
Yeah. It wasn’t exactly filling me with warm and fuzzies to realize that there’s no safe path to smoothly becoming the Wise White-Haired Pilot. Nope, all the people I respected most had come up through “let’s see what this baby can do” and “Sarge, they’re not going to send replacements, so we’re gonna have to figure something out” and “Please L-rd, don’t let me **** this up” moments to arrive at the calm, collected, and in control end of their career.
A lot of bumps and bruises and hasty patches and walk it off and swearing in octaves I can’t normally reach later… people are starting to mistake me for wise. And I know they’re only doing so because they’re so new they still have eggshell behind their ears, but…
What if that’s how the guys I looked up to felt?