Uncommon Common Sense
Thursday July 29th 2010

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Just Don’t Feel Guilty?

While eat­ing lunch, I could hear the peo­ple at a nearby table talk­ing about how to get around some rules.  I wasn’t eaves­drop­ping, it’s just that  the gist of their con­ver­sa­tion could be heard by any­one within earshot, whether we liked it or not.  One man’s state­ment even­tu­ally rose above the din.  He said, “And don’t feel guilty, because every­body does it!”

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Asking Inmates Who’s To Blame

A friend and I were walk­ing by the Sheriff’s Office, re-hashing how the accep­tance of per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity actu­ally gives us con­trol over and own­er­ship of our own lives.  Although we now seem to have a large con­tin­gent of “peren­nial vic­tims” in our cul­ture, I believe most peo­ple still want to be the Cap­tains of their Ships.

As we passed the Sheriff’s park­ing lot, I noticed a group of jail trustees, sit­ting on some benches.  I said I would bet that, if asked how they got into their present pickle, they would admit it was of their own doing.  Offend­ers tend to do that, when the Court process is over and they have noth­ing to gain or lose by speak­ing their minds.  So I walked over to them, and began a conversation.

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Why the Movies and I Broke Up

Dur­ing the past 50 years movies have really changed, but I haven’t kept pace. Men­tally I’m still perched on the edge of my the­atre seat, legs dan­gling, a mouth­ful of jujubes welded to my gums. The other kids and I are still gasp­ing at uncom­pli­cated cliff-hangers on Sat­ur­day after­noons and the big screen and I are on the same track.  We stayed there too — until the 1960’s, when we parted ways. Pro­duc­ers and direc­tors some­how no longer knew how to make actors por­tray bad behav­ior with­out rub­bing my nose in it.

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You Can’t Stand on Gelatin

These days author­ity can be a lit­tle wobbly–like Jell-O.  It has a basic form, but when the foun­da­tion is shaken, it bounces all over the place.  It seems to me that, in a cri­sis, many deci­sions are now based on what will upset the fewest num­ber of peo­ple, or on what is least likely to be over­ruled.  Good lead­er­ship is sup­posed to do what is right, regard­less of what some­one else may later think, say or do.

I remem­ber what was, for me, the first hint of “uncer­tainty” from supe­ri­ors on the job.  We had removed a baby from a home because of seri­ous neglect.  The par­ents were nowhere to be found at the moment, and the child was mal­nour­ished, with a case of dia­per rash that rivaled some  jun­gle rot I saw in Viet­nam.  When it came to pros­e­cut­ing the par­ents, how­ever, a supe­rior hinted that we had to be care­ful, because we had no right to impose our per­sonal stan­dards on others.

I was dumb­founded.  I under­stand per­sonal free­dom and indi­vid­ual styles of life, but it had never occurred to me that pro­vid­ing basic care to one’s own child could be a mat­ter of per­sonal choice.  I found the com­ment very con­fus­ing, and when author­i­ties are con­fused, they tend to be erratic in their conduct.

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Disagreement is not a Declaration of War

Peo­ple don’t always agree with me, but I try not to vil­ify them sim­ply because they don’t.  It’s true I may think they are totally off base, but they may think my lit­tle gray cells are no more than low-grade insu­lat­ing foam.  Our dif­fer­ences can make com­mu­ni­ca­tion inter­est­ing and chal­leng­ing, but they should not be cause for war.

Life brings debate.  We can­not live with­out form­ing opin­ions, and because we each have dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ences, those opin­ions do not always agree.  How­ever, label­ing peo­ple who dis­agree with us as con­temptible is noth­ing more than a tac­tic to win argu­ments.  It often works, too, because no one in his right mind would want to agree with a ter­ri­ble per­son and no one in his right mind wants to be thought of as the Devil, himself.

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Managing the “F” Word

An  arti­cle in Mail On-line states that a high school in another English-speaking coun­try has decided to allow their stu­dents to swear at teach­ers — as long as they don’t do it more than five times dur­ing a ses­sion.  The administration’s rea­son­ing is report­edly that bad words are a part of the stu­dents’ every­day lan­guage and, by keep­ing a tally, they are, “giv­ing them a bit of lee­way, but want them to think about the way they talk and how they might do better.”

Accord­ing to the arti­cle, “the teacher will ini­tially tol­er­ate (although not con­done) the use of the f-word (or deriv­a­tives) five times, and these will be tal­lied on the board so all stu­dents can see the run­ning score.”   Any­one who goes over the limit “will be ‘spo­ken’ to at the end of the lesson.”

Well, there’s a deter­rent if I ever heard one.  Any stu­dent who will use the “f” word five times to a teacher dur­ing class is sure to cringe at the prospect of being “talked to” after­ward, by that same teacher, no less. 

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Bedtime for Teenagers — Revisited

I’ve had sev­eral queries to the blog ask­ing, “What time should teenagers go to bed?”   My pre­vi­ous post must not have given enough of an answer because read­ers are evi­dently look­ing for a spe­cific hour.  Well, if that’s what par­ents need, there is a way to come up with def­i­nite bed­times.  We’ll just apply com­mon sense.

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Becoming Ourselves

Like most peo­ple who face an unknown chal­lenge, new pro­ba­tion offi­cers some­times for­get that it takes a while to develop their own “styles.” Although he didn’t say so dur­ing his train­ing, one offi­cer later admit­ted that he hadn’t believed there was such a thing as his own tech­nique. I had warned him not to try to copy any­one else, but he didn’t have the con­fi­dence to be him­self, so he spent a long time try­ing to imi­tate oth­ers.  It made him second-guess every­thing, and even had him ques­tion­ing his choice of careers.

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A Case of Better Late than Never

The girl was about six­teen and was in Court for a num­ber of offenses, not the least of which was using her par­ents’ credit card to run up a bill of over one thou­sand dol­lars. Of course she had noth­ing to show for the money, since it had all been spent on friends and “hav­ing fun.”

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The Walk on the Moon

Man on the MoonForty years ago Neil Arm­strong and “Buzz” Aldrin walked on the moon.  As they were doing so, I was trudg­ing around another stark land­scape — a fire sup­port base in Viet­nam.  I was one of 125 Amer­i­can Red Cross Donut Dol­lies who were sta­tioned in-Country at the time.  My co-workers and I were sent mostly to for­ward areas, so we got to know the opin­ions of the com­bat troops.  We talked with them enough to hear how they felt about things.  On that par­tic­u­lar day their talk was about the men on the moon.

I’m telling you, I’m just not that impressed,” said one man who had just come in from a long patrol.  Another chimed in.  “Well, yeah, it’s great we put some­body up there, ‘n all, but you can bet they’ll get them home, alright, yet they can’t seem to get me outta here!”  The rest of the men agreed and added their own takes on their sit­u­a­tions, as com­pared to the Astronauts’.

I’ve never for­got­ten those remarks.  In fact, since we had no tele­vised access to what was occur­ring, the Moon Walk, for me, has always been more about those GI’s and their com­ments, rather than a visual mem­ory from see­ing it hap­pen as it occurred.  That doesn’t mean I’m not proud of the accom­plish­ment.  I am proud we made it to the moon, and I’m also proud of those soldiers, the nurses and oth­ers who were doing their stints in Viet­nam at the time.  Most of them, in their long­ing for home, thought they might as well have been on the moon too, that July 20, 1969.

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