How to Wear a Suit Well

The holidays are over, and if you’re like me, once the last decorations are stored away, the house more or less back in order except for the hole in the wall Uncle Jack made when he stumbled over the dog to show he could balance a glass of beer on his forehead, you’re ready to plop down on the couch by the window for a nice long rest in the sun.

The grand kids got pretty much what they wanted, and right on schedule, busted up some of their gifts before the sun went down that first day. All seemed pleased with their gifts.

It was fun watching their faces. After all, Christmas is about giving and expressing your feeling for one another.

I know just enough about other religions to be dangerous, but I’m guessing those cultures who celebrate Diwali, Ramadan, Hanukkah, or other beliefs, all are wishing and hoping for goodwill and blessings to all just like us even if their celebrations come at a different time of the year.

I can’t remember where I read it, but a couple weeks before Christmas, the story was told of a children’s Christmas pageant where at the end, children lined up across the stage, each holding a cardboard square on which was printed a letter. The signs were supposed to read, CHRISTMAS LOVE, but the little girl holding the M had it upside down. It read CHRISTWAS LOVE. Folks snickered, then grew eerily silent as the real meaning struck them, CHRIST WAS LOVE. Accident on the girl’s part? Yeah. Could it be there was a hand involved, but not man’s?

Whether the Christian’s Christ or the other religions’ God. that’s what it’s all about——it’s all about love.

And it took a little girl to remind the crowd of the truth.

Now that the holidays are over doesn’t mean we have to toss the feeling aside. It really isn’t too difficult to keep the spirit.

I have a friend who enjoys purchasing a supply of gold dollars periodically and passing them out at random to passing individuals, usually youngsters.

Sometimes when folks are in a hurry to check out of a store, or when the customer ahead of then has twice as many items as he should, they take it out on the clerk. Have you ever noticed how some clerks never smile? Next time, put a smile on your face and talk to them—just a tiny compliment. You’d be surprised how it will boost their spirits—and yours.

I’ve tried to do that ever since a very successful businessman in Groves spoke to one of my D.E. classes over thirty years back. He told us he always searched for a way to compliment a customer. “Once,” he laughed, “A gentleman wanted to buy a suit. He looked like a gorilla.”

My prize wise-cracking student popped up. “How did you compliment someone like that?”

He smiled, and with the wisdom of the elderly, he said, “I told him he wore the suit well. And he did,” my friend added. “Very well.”

We don’t have to go out and give hundreds or thousands to charities (although if you can pull it off, more power to you), but a small, inexpensive compliment can provide the recipient a hundred bucks worth of ego for the remainder of the day.

I never knew who wrote them, but I remember a time years earlier at school when anonymous notes showed up in teachers’ boxes. They were short in length, but grand in praise, ‘Thank you for what you did yesterday,’ ‘You’re a fine teacher’, and others along that vein. Anonymous praise.

The notes lasted for a couple years, then stopped. I’ve gone back at times looking at who left that year, but I never came close to learning the identity of our Literary Samaritan.

A lady down the street from me walks the block every day or so. One morning as I was carrying garbage to the road, I noticed dogs had gotten into my neighbor’s garbage across the street, scattering it everywhere. He had already left for work.

I glanced down the road. Here came my neighbor down the street with a garbage bag. Now, I doubt if my acquaintance across the street knows our neighbor even performed such an act of kindness, but it is those small acts that help fulfill our lives.

The Dalai Lama, a Buddhist, said it best. “This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple, and the philosophy is kindness.

And that just about says it all.

Merry Christmas the rest of the year.

To Spank or Not to Spank

A few days back, I read a column, The Liberal View, which submitted that spanking children should be out of style. At first, I figured the article would be one of those tongue-in-cheek pieces, but upon going deeper into the column, I discovered as usual, I was 180 degrees wrong.

The author was deadly serious, quoting survey results from the American Academy of Pediatrics. Now, I won’t sit here and dispute the results of the survey. I’m sure they were accurate when they said the response indicated that of the 2,500 mothers interviewed, .54 percent admitted they’d spanked their child once or twice within the past month.

Then the author fell back on the flawed old saw that ‘violence begets violence’. She implies if you spank a child, he becomes a little monster, a bully, aggressive. Naturally, he doesn’t morph into a dislikeable little savage overnight, but, according to her interpretation of the survey, he will eventually.

That’s BS piled higher than the Empire State Building, or whatever building is the tallest in the world. If spankings make kids bullies, I would have been the most aggressive bully in Texas. But you can ask anyone. I’m anything but a bully. I’m a great believer in ‘a soft answer turnth away wrath.’ (although today, a soft answer seems to invite it)

Now, the column used an anecdotal explanation that the writer’s grandfather, an immigrant (though I have no idea what that has to do with anything), used a cat-of-nine-tails on her father when he was a youth. Often her father said, he had no idea why he was being punished.(I don’t know what that has to do with anything either)
In addition, her father said that everyone (all immigrants, I guess) kept such a weapon in his home in that particular borough.

I admitted I was spanked—a bunch. If the American Academy of Pediatrics had interviewed my Dad, his response would have blown the survey off the charts. I was probably a two-a-week spankee—and those were the good weeks. But I can tell you this, I always knew why I was on the wrong end of the belt. There ain’t a kid alive who doesn’t know why he’s getting his tail spanked.

Oh yeah, I know, there are loonies out there. There are disgusting pieces of scum wearing human visages abusing kids. I’m not talking about them.

I’m talking about average moms and pops sincerely trying to rear their children, not the others. We can do very little with the slums and those sickos who shouldn’t have had children.

There’s spanking, and then there’s spanking. One has to know when and how and if the situation calls for it.

With forty-one years in our public schools, I, along with the other relics in my generation, have witnessed the decline of parental support for schools in respect to discipline and academics.

Once, troublemakers in schools were labeled as products of low income, single parent homes. I never believed that. I still don’t. There were as many problems with children from the more prosperous homes.

If that isn’t true, then why do even the more affluent school districts create their own police force or set up a working relationship with the local police?

My best friend, Bobby, and I were mischievous, but his Dad and mine kept us pretty much in line. When his little brother came along, his mom nagged his dad not to be as hard on him as he had been on Bobby. That kid got away with stuff for which our tails were blistered.

Bobby and I taught in the Fort Worth area in the sixties. I ran into him in Austin in the eighties at a conference. His forty-something brother had been married and divorced three times, was currently unemployed and living at home with the parents.

I know, I know. One example proves nothing.

Am I saying spanking solves everything? No way. Raising children is the hardest thing in the world, even worse than a root canal. Just find out what works for you and do that. Don’t let a new world liberal, or an old fogy like me, sway you.

One comment about the survey though. Forty-six percent, or 1150 Mothers didn’t touch the kid. What do you want to bet we have a lot more spoiled brats in that group than those who got their little tails spanked?

rconwell@gt.rr.com

www.kentconwell.blogspot.com