Part 3, One Leading, Others Trying to Follow

Bloggers Note:  Things have been a little busy so I haven't had time to finish this despite pledging to do just that.  Thanks for being patient.

After all the frustration Calvin and his wife, Gloria had with Ms. Shrill, the cheerleading coach, Calvin thought there might be a solution to their problem. He knew Joe Powers who was in a community group with Calvin.  In fact, Joe was the president of the group.  Calvin did not know many people who were as respected as Joe.  Joe was a master at developing a consensus among others and putting in place an effective plan that would be used and made to work.
Joe's wife was a longtime staff member at the Needsville High School.

Calvin explained to Joe the problem that he faced.  The fact that he spent all this money and if one did the math and multiplied 26 families giving all that money, the sum that Ms. Shrill was receiving was over $30,000! Joe was alarmed about that amount of money being raised.

Joe decided to help Calvin by talking to the athletic director.  He stated that there was an awful lot of money raised by the parents.  Did that alarm the director?  The athletic director shrugged and said booster clubs are not regulated.  When Cindy became a cheerleader, Gloria and Calvin  were automatically considered to be part of the Cheerleading Boosters.  As long as there wasn't much dissent and it wasn't organized, then Ms. Shrill could raise just as much as she wanted to.

Calvin had spent a whole evening one night writing and calculating the math of how much each parent gave, how much the parents raised for fundraisers and, in turn, the total amount of money they collectively raised.  They raised over $30,000.   Then he compared how much money, time and effort went into helping out Arthur who was in football.  Where him and his wife spent well over $1,000 for Cindy's cheerleading, they spent about $900 for Arthur being in football from 4th grade to senior in high school.  It averaged out to be $100 per year!

The next time Joe and Calvin got together, Joe relayed the disappointing conversation he had with the athletic director.  Calvin asked him a couple questions, but it was very clear that there was nothing he could do.  The only thing he could do with all the facts and figures he had was to use them if Ms. Shrill wanted Cindy back to cheerlead in her sophomore year.  Cindy was getting tired of all the demands Ms. Shrill and her assistants made on her and her teammates.  They wanted far too much.  Calvin became very hopeful that they wouldn't go through the nightmare of fund raising that occurred this past year.  If Ms. Shrill pressed for Cindy to join a few months from now, Calvin would have all the facts and figures to fire at her and send to her in an email.  He was going to make demands.  He was going to make Ms. Shrill wish she'd never met Calvin.  Unfortunately, he was a "voice in the wilderness".   He heard of no parent who agreed with him or who wanted to challenge Ms. Shrill.  All he could do is conclude that it was another expensive venture involving his daughter.  As much as his daughter expected out of Gloria and him, it wouldn't be the last expensive venture.  Calvin thought of his parents. They would never, ever considered getting themselves involved in a situation like he did.  They would have just pulled him out of that.  He might have been angry with them, but they were right.  There's so many other places to spend your money! 

Emails & more emails / Ted's year in football

is there anything more tedious than going through e-mails and having to delete MOST OF THEM OUT???? It reminds me of eating grapefruit.   I like grapefruit, but it takes 5 minutes to cut the slices out and 40 seconds to eat the slices and 30 seconds to drink the juice.  The pleasure of eating the grapefruit is so much shorter than the tedium of cutting out the slices.  The pleasure or importance of reading a few good informative e-mails outweighs the countless number I'm required to delete.

& I delete everyday, every single day.  It's like a bush that has to be trimmed on a regular basis.  I have had the same e-mail for 15 yrs. so that's part of the problem.  I use my spam, but that doesn't always help.  I contribute a little $ in politics on election years, but absolutely refuse to give anything on offyears.  & just like the bears in the parks that like it when they get food from tourists and keep coming back, the organization keep asking and keep asking.  & I just continually delete and delete.

Oh, here's some good news.  Ted can bench press 200 lbs. He's made his high school weight room Wall of Fame. The most I was ever able to do is 155 lbs.  I hope he is as successful as an adult as he is in high school.  Hope he could get a scholarship from that.  He might start at a very good football program, so who knows?  One can always dream a little.  Sure would help us financially if he earned a scholarship.  The offers on the numerous emails from colleges get a standard response from me...."unless you are able to offer a football scholarship from your illustrious school, my son, Ted, will be going to South Suburban College"

My son, Ted, turned 18 on October 8.   The first 2 1/2 months of his senior year have been very eventful.  In February of this year, Ted had reconstructive knee surgery. Due to injuries suffered during the first half of his junior year, he had tears in BOTH his ACL and MCL ligaments.  It was really awful for both, Maribeth (his mother), Ted and me.  Before the surgery, the doctor had very sad news for him.  He said he not only noticed 2 tears in 2 vital ligaments in the knee area but had bone/cartilage damage in his knee.  The doctor said, "You are not going to be in football your senior year!"
Now consider this, please.  Ted had spent months getting up at 5:30 to run, condition lift weights in anticipation of his junior year in football.  He was confident after an excellent year playing offensive line on the Sophomore  Team.  He made the Wall of Fame in leg press at well over 350 lbs!  He is one of the biggest players on his team (height wise) at 6 foot, 3 inches.  He's gained weight by the extra muscle he has put on.  You can see it in his junior picture that the muscles in his neck have strengthened and expanded the width of his neck!  He planned to play Varsity at offensive tackle his junior year and then his senior year.  He would play at Oak Forest High School varsity team a well-respected high school football program that has made 20 consecutive years in the playoffs.   He suffers a season-ending injury in football training camp in August, 2015.  He's out for the season. So, then, after months of getting up at 5:30 in the morning, running, lifting weights and doing agility drills, he finds out that after being out of football his junior year, he would be OUT OF FOOTBALL HIS LAST YEAR, HIS SENIOR YEAR.      

So, on that fateful, cold February afternoon, the doctor says, "You  are not going to be in football your senior year!"  Ted cries and cries with his mother comforting him.  For about a month, he was so disconsolate that he substantially reduced what he ate and lost a significant amount of weight.  He didn't want to talk about football anymore!

But Ted didn't quit.  His uncle Bill, said, "Don't let the doctors and the physical therapists get you down with what you CAN'T do!!"  Ted heeded those words and lifted weights, and he ran.  Ted told me that the head football coach literally stopped by him every school day starting in March, when Ted ate, lunch asking him if there was any hope he could play.  Every school day for a couple of months!!   He faithfully followed the doctors orders and went to physical therapy 2 times a week and did so for about 3 months.  He had regular checkups with his physician.  Then, this past summer, to our shock, the doctor said, "You are almost healed.  You don't have to see me anymore unless you have any problem with your knee.  I am clearing you to play football your senior year.  We will be careful, so you shouldn't practice yet.  But by mid-August, you can join the football team!" 

There were obstacles.  Ted missed the first month of Bengal football training camp.  He lost a lot of strength, nearly 100 pounds of strength in the knee which had the operation.  The coaches took him off the Wall of Fame in leg press because he could no longer do over 350 pounds (about 159 kilograms).  He certainly stayed on the Wall of Fame for being able to bench press 200 pounds and more!  His coach was honest with him.  "I don't want you getting hurt again.  We have a starting line-up for the offensive line.  However, if you are better than either tackle I will let you play.  The offensive tackles were very good.  One was almost as tall as Ted, and  a few of the starters throught the season weighed over 200 pounds.  Many of the games that Oak Forest Bengals played were close. They didn't put Ted in during close games, because he was a reserve. They had a winning season, and they made the football playoffs 21 consecutive years.  
Ted was angry and disappointed that he didn't play as much as he wanted.  However, he played against Clemente HS the entire second half of the game as left tackle and they beat the school 55-8.  He played in a conference game as well.  He blocked hard to enable the runner to make several touchdowns.  It wasn't as much as he wanted.   Yet, he got to work with the teammates who loved and respected him.  He enjoyed the camaradarie of working with them, and together, they suffered through the grueling, hard-hitting practices.  In a way, Ted was lucky the setback wasn't worse.  One day in his freshman or sophomore year, his teammate broke his leg in practice.  As soon as it happened and for the 20 min. it took for the ambulance to arrive, he was screaming constantly from intense pain.
Ted didn't quit.  He made a quick, strong recovery.  He learned the value of working out whether you play or not play.  (He certainly learned that lesson better than me.  He may be taller than me but I still outweigh him!)
Here is his football picture when the official photographer came to the Bengals football team.  He learned what teamwork really means, as did I when I played football, basketball and track.  That's a lifetime lesson.  It's one lesson that's very valuable!

saving money through Oatmeal! & working @ Chegg Tutoring

Money has been tight; I have to admit.
But I have been staying busy w/ Chegg Tutoring, selling on eBay and looking for a better job.  I've even been so busy, I cannot finish the last installment of the cheerleading saga that I wrote on this blog! 
Everything takes time to do.  There's a place that has caused a stir in Oak Forest due to its controversial nature.  I might work there, but don't want to discuss just yet.
If I take a job there, you'll find out.

One of the things I often eat in the morning is oatmeal with brown sugar and fruit.  Get the water very hot, add the brown sugar, use regular oatmeal and then I add either cut up apples, grapes (if my son, Ted, suggests and is w/ me at grocery store) or strawberries.  Apples are in season, now, so the picture above has apples in it. 

This looks a little messed up.   What happens is in that I make the mistake of making too much oatmeal.  There have been times, on Saturday for example, I would make it,  eat it, but then it would take until NOON TO FINISH eating it, b/c I would be doing all these other activities:  answering emails, reading and sending emails, reviewing or writing on Facebook, tutoring a student on Chegg, dealing with the pool problem at TMA or talking on the phone.  

The problem is that you have oatmeal in your bowl for several hours.  That's not good b/c it gets cold and your bowl is harder to clean.  I'm all for doing dishes quickly since we haven't had a dishwasher since about 1999 (drainage issue).  

So, I came up with a solution Monday.  Taking 3 hours to eat a huge portion of oatmeal is good for my diet (I skip lunch and lose weight, I've lost almost 10 pounds) but it's a shabby thing to have in the condo unit.  So, Monday, I said, "no more!!"

I put a medium portion of Saran wrap on my kitchen counter. 

I dumped the remainder of the oatmeal I ate after about a 1/2 hour, 45 min.  & voila(!).  I had a leftover for later.  I ate it this afternoon.  

I love working for Chegg Tutoring!  I have tutored English and Government/political science.  I've advertised on my profile that I can also teach: psychology, sociology, math and history.  I minored in history when I graduated from UW-La Crosse. I loved the 2 writing assignments I have received.  The first time was talking to a student who is going to college in Michigan.  I tutored her to write a marketing campaign for selling a food product at a grocery store.  I loved it! I loved the camaraderie with the student, learning a bit more about him or her, solving the problem together and of course, GETTING PAID.

It pays a lot  more than when I wrote at Law Bloggers last year.  I loved writing legal articles, but I became the victim of my own success.  Law Bloggers put me in touch with attorney D. Tyler Roberts. He's a very good lawyer working from his office in Lexington, Kentucky.  

I wrote about Kentucky laws when using guns (if you can use a gun in another state, it's very easy to use the same gun in Kentucky), probate laws, and I wrote about the awful shape of nursing homes in that state and investigated on 1 of the most severe fines Medicare levied.  The nursing home in Kentucky had an outbreak of scabies.  I also wrote about federal gun laws, gun trusts, estates, car and boat accidents (a fatal boat accident on the Ohio River just after 4th of July; it killed 5 people)  and an interesting dog bite case in Kentucky.  

The blogs that I wrote were on his website; they covered many of his areas of legal practice; they had the desired effect  of more clients, and he didn't need anymore blogs from me.  

flashback from 4 yrs ago, visiting Navy Pier!

We went to one of the more popular tourist attractions in Chicago last month, Navy Pier.  One of the nice features of Navy Pier is its very impressive collection of stained glass.  Here are some pictures taken, the first one was after my kids & I rode the ferris wheel, it is  150 feet tall (46 m):

The stained glass windows are great to see as they change depending on the month you go to Navy Pier.

Also, today is my brother's birthday.  He's been a huge influence on my life.

He is on the right with my youngest brother and sister.
My siblings are 2 sisters and 4 other brothers. 

Coming Soon!

The final installment, Part 3 of One Leads, Others Try to Follow.

The final conclusion of the cheerleading coach that talked parents out of their money will be written within the next few weeks.  

Oh No! Campaign 2016!

"What I want is power, more power
What I need is an innocent life
Want to do it in the broad daylight
I'm the truck, I'm the suicide

Gotta get into a fight
Can't get out of it
Want to get into a fight
Gonna get away with it
Gotta get into a fight
Watch me, watch me now"

Rolling Stones' song "Fight" written by Jagger, Richards and Ron Woods from the album Dirty Work released in 1985

It's ALL SO UGLY!

In the early Aughts, I knew my marriage was in serious trouble when my ex seemed to live in a parallel universe away from me.  I would come home from work at 6:30, by about 8 or so we would have a huge argument. Now, here is what is strange.  Only 1 set of events happened from 6:30 - 8pm!  If there were cameras, they may show the same exact event from different angles, but we all know that at precisely 6:37:00 pm, there wouldn't be one camera showing me eating spaghetti and another camera showing me smoking a pipe.  That's impossible for me to do both in the exact same second! 

So, it's clear for you all to see that there's only 1 sequence of events!

That's simple.....here's where it gets complicated.  

2 people can have very different points of view about the SAME events that occurred. This is especially true if they are really in disagreement like my ex & I.  If 2 people love each other AND feel they have a GREAT FUTURE together, then those 2 people usually (not always) will have the version of events that are pretty much alike, if not the SAME.  I think we've seen that.  

I remember reading a story. It was about a ho-hum one night stand. It was consensual sex.  The girl's version was amazingly different from the guy!  Now, the girl wasn't wrong and the guy was right.  It was just a matter of different biases, different backgrounds, different points of view, different philosophies about getting together and going to bed. The young man thought that something went wrong.  He was confused.  The woman was happy and thought things were a big improvement over most nights.  

Needless to say that when my wife and I saw things different, when we had our own separate parallel universes we were living in, we fought a lot.  When we fought a lot, night after night, day after day, our marriage eventually died of combat fatigue.  It was made a whole lot worse when she didn't want to accept that she was in some way to blame for the divorce, (just like I was to blame, too!), and there was this awful fictional story of grotesque things I supposedly did which had no truth to them.  Sadder still, was that she convinced herself to believe it.  She could recite the story so well, that it sounded like the truth when it was FICTION!! This is occurring in the United States too.  Some people actually believe that we didn't fight the Civil War over slavery!  That is only one of MANY false narratives going on in our nation.  There's worse ones, and they concern stories of what's happening now!   

Behold what is happening in the United States.  Some call us a superpower (maybe we are, we spend more money than the next several nations with a mighty militaries COMBINED!)

 However, some of us think we're a nation nearly bursting at the seams. Those same people (including ME) feel a certain heartbreak over people saying things about President Obama that seems completely alien to my point of view.  I'm also sad and disgusted about other people, mostly very angry people saying things about Donald Trump and that seems like fiction,too.  

It seems so shocking. 

Many, many Americans are struggling to get by financially.  That is the part we all agree on or about 80-90% of us agree on.   I took a number of economics classes and have a basic understanding of what happened.  This is a simplified version of events. Many people would think that my explanation is true.....here it goes: 

Mike and Mary were husband and wife.  They were married in 1955, then Jim was born in 1961.  When Mike and Mary were raising Jim, their total income was about $25,000 a year.  In those days, that was a pretty good income.   Many families like Mike and Mary had about $15,000 worth of expenses.  There were some more couples that had even less than $15,000 worth of expenses. 
If they made $25,000 and in the same year spent $15,000, we all see that they had $10,000 left over.  That's awesome.  In the 60s, many families had that type of situation.  

During the 70s, there were times when Americans and others around the world suffered from inflation.  The price of things shot up.  That meant that you were going to have a hard time, because if you bought your family $20 worth of groceries in 1971, and then the price of groceries went up to $35 in 1973 and that happened week after week, then that was disturbing.  (That would be $780 you would have to spend more during the year {52 weeks x the $15 increase}).
Fortunately, after 1982, the Americans didn't suffer from inflation.  Inflation is when prices rise dramatically.  However, prices raised some, just not very much.  The percentage of increase was rarely 10% or more.  That's the good news.
The bad news is that starting in 1980 and going up to this year 2016, incomes increased sometimes  but when they did, they increased slowly.  The increases were small.  So, let's go back to Mike, Mary and their son, Jim.   Jim starts working in 1980, he finds a middle class career similar to his father's career.  He gets married to Suzy and they have a child named Ben.
Let's do the math.  Jim and Suzy make about $50,000 a year.  That's twice what Jim's parents made. The problem is that while they make $50,000 a year, their expense are anywhere from $45,000 a year to $55,000 a year.   This type of situation (not exactly the same salary)  happens to millions of Americans.  LOOK AT THE MATH!!
While Mary and Mike saved $10,000 a year, Suzy and Jim are lucky to clear a mere half of that at $5,000 and a lot of years their expenses are exceed their income.  Then, Suzy and Jim use credit cards.   Now, some rich folks say that Suzy and Jim are stupid while their parents were smart.  But, that's Bullshit.  If incomes raise slower and slower, anyone can see that it becomes harder and harder to pay for things!  I don't use a credit card for vacations, because I never went to California or Canada or New York.  I'm happy to say my parents went to many states.  That's great.  They took me to Utah to see my sister one year.  Great trip! But many people in the US don't want to take a vacation if they're in debt by $10,000 or more.
I use a credit card to pay for a car repair.  That's bad too, some will point out, but really now, I need the car to go to work, so SHOOT ME.  Oh, that's right, the economy already did over the years.

So, there's not a big argument that people get fewer and fewer raises.  There's no argument that raises are often smaller and smaller.
People in the United States fight over many, many different reasons of what went wrong between 1970 to 2016.  Some blame it on foreign nations grabbing jobs that were once in the US.  Some blame it on groups of feckless, contemptible groups of people who live in projects and shoot up heroin and join gangs and shoot up people. Some blame the Arabs for making too much money selling us oil, then having people from those nations becoming terrorists. Some people blame ourselves for consuming too much gas in the first place and needing and importing so much oil in the first place.  Some people blame the government even though the federal government has lower tax rates NOW than they did back in 1970.  Others blame illegal immigrants (like Donald Trump).  Some blame the greed of the rich.  Some point out the income disparity between the rich, middle class and poor is as bad as in 1928, the year before the Great Depression.  Just an FYI: the last sentence is pretty much true; it's a fact.  We all agree that things have changed since 1970, but there's just so many people blaming so many other people and things. 

II. 
There's also a different type of problem going on in the United States.
There's a group of  people who are angry that in the 1950s white people had a lot more power than they do now.  Those people like the "good ole' days".  Those people believe that Blacks and Hispanics unjustly benefited from "hand outs" and don't work.  There's some rich folks bitching that half of the people are on Welfare.  Those same people don't know shit because the unemployment rate is 5.5% and when things were really bad in 2009, when there was a horrible recession, when Obama first became president, we were just over 10% unemployment. There's NEVER, EVER was a time where 1/2 the people were on welfare.  That's like the bullshit parallel universe that I complained about at the beginning of this story!! People just see things around them or look at a paper occasionally and think that's the way  things are all over.  They get about 1/11th of the real story.  They construct a group of people who are to blame while I believe another group is to blame.
There's White people who are terrified that in 2050, white people will be outnumbered by the minority population of Blacks and Hispanics combined.  That doesn't bother me one damn bit.  That's not horrible, that's just demographics!  You have these racists who scream about the "dying white race".
 It's awful.  I see Whites complain of Blacks and Blacks complain of Whites.  I've seen Blacks complain of Hispanics and Hispanics complain of Blacks.  I've seen Mexicans complain of Puerto Ricans and Puerto Ricans complain of Mexicans.  I had a close friend about 10 years ago.  Her parents were from Puerto Rico.  She was a good person, hard worker and ethical woman and probably still is.  The only time she yelled at me was the time I accidentally called her "Mexican".  Yeah, she screamed at me. I guess I made a mistake.

The United States is really not United that much.  I don't know if we'll ever be United.
  If we don't agree on the facts, how can we agree on the solutions? 

It SHOULDN'T be that way, but sometimes we can't Fight the SEETHER

For the sake of legality, the awesome, artistic and articulate song "Seether" was written by Nina Gordon.  The lyrics herein are pretty self evident.  The band Veruca Salt plays the "Seether".

 Veruca Salt had a rough break up, Thank God, Nina Gordon and Louise Post (co-leaders of Veruca Salt) both got married, had husbands respectively, each  had 1 child and figured life was too short to fight and they reunited.

AND....Why  do I bring out these lyrics?  Because, recently,  in a couple instances, I just want so badly to help, & I can't.  I simply am on the outside looking in.  It feels like all I can do is PRAY  and Seethe.

& I'm really glad I got to see Veruca Salt in person back in the mid 90s (still my favorite decade)

Anger takes on a life all its own; they describe it like a girl......so here's the feeling that we sometimes feel right to our brain, our ribs & THROUGH THE SPINE......down to our feet. 

SEETHER 
Seether is neither loose nor tight.
Seether is neither black nor white.
I try to keep her on a short leash.
I try to calm her down.
I try to ram her into the ground, yeah.

Can't fight the seether 
Can't fight the seether 
Can't fight the seether 

I can't see her till I'm foaming at the mouth.
Seether is neither big nor small.
Seether is the center of it all.
I try to rock her in my cradle.
I try to knock her out.
I try to cram her back in my mouth, yeah.

Can't fight the seether 
Can't fight the seether 
Can't fight the seether 

I can't see her till I'm foaming at the mouth.
Keep her down, boiling water.
Keep her down, what a lovely daughter.
Oh she is not born like other girls,
But I know how to conceive her.
Oh she may not look like other girls,
But she's a snarl tooth seether. Seether!

Can't fight the seether 
Can't fight the seether 
Can't fight the seether  

I can't see her till I'm foaming at the mouth. 
Yeah
 -  -  -  -  - 
for the official video see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC9AUR-iTo0 
Veruca Salt music is worth owning.  I'll give you 20 more reasons if you want!  

Part II, One Leading, Others Trying to Follow

Calvin was shocked.  What the hell did his wife and him get themselves into?  He felt literally robbed.  There was a slogan back in the 70s.  When someone got a raw deal they called it, "Screwed! Blewed and tattooed!!"   It wasn't even a matter of Cindy using her formidable persuasive powers on her parents like she sometimes did.  Prior to that odious  first meeting, everyone in the family wanted Cindy to be a cheerleader.  She was a cheerleader for about 2 years.  Why stop a good thing? 
No one imagined spending under $2,000 for her extra-curricular activity.  
That was the focal point of the resentment Cindy's parents had.  How could cheerleading in 1 damn year be more expensive than all the spending of all the extra-curricular activities of their son, Arthur, in the 8 years of primary and secondary school? 
How could cheerleading in 1 damn year be twice as expensive than the registration fee they paid at Needsville High School for Cindy's education in her freshman year?  
Who is arguing that cheerleading is WORTH more than the education she was getting her freshman year?  That was especially so, because Cindy was an outstanding student who earned the Presidential Award when she graduated 8th grade.  She would learn a great deal her freshman year.  
So.....who is arguing that cheerleading 1 year is WORTH more than the education she was getting her freshman year?  NO ONE, not even Ms. Shrill would say that.  Even she knew better. 
During that infamous 1st meeting, when a very negative 1st impression was made, Ms. Shrill ordered parents to read the emails she would send them. She indicated that they would sometimes be one a day.  About one month after the 1st meeting, Ms. Shrill asserted, 
"Please know that we must always prepay for everything and you WILL be held responsible for the payments for all items received or that your athlete participates in. If you get too far behind in your fees your daughter may not be able to receive future items."

Oh, I get it.  It really makes sense, because there were some parents of cheerleaders that she had in the past chafing at paying exorbitant amounts of money.  It was well know that Ms. Shrill had to work hard to get money out of them (oh, how dare they!).  So, Ms. Shrill, being the wily coach she is, wanted to send out a warning to the parents out there that yanking well over $1,000 out of their pocketbooks was no mere whimsical idea, no threat, no, it was a promise.  Pay on time, dammit, and don't be late.  

One email, in particular, was so far, the worst.  Calvin was so pissed off with it, he deleted it.  Ms. Shrill said something to the effect that a parents' attitude about cheerleading would be reflected in their daughter.  
Oh really, Ms. Shrill?  So, not only are you blatantly screwing our household's finances (they weren't on a very firm footing to begin with), but you want us to lie to Cindy and tell her how pleased we are taking it up the ass with all this $$ you ask from us.  Then, before he deleted that email, he swore at her. 

Then he took a deep breath.  He calmed down.  He experienced some good news because he was hired again and would be working at downtown Chicago.  Maybe after they dug themselves out of the hole he created from being laid off at his old job, maybe just maybe, he would accept paying the $155 a month more gracefully.  
 He resolved that even if Ms. Shrill were to ask Gloria and him for $1,000,000, he would never hate her.  He would only hate what she did and all the money she took from them.  He would hate the sin, not the sinner.  He went to Church every week, he prayed several times a day (usually, at least once every day).  He read the Bible enough to know Jesus said, "Love your enemies and pray for them."  Wow, that's going to be extremely difficult.  Ummm, Jesus, isn't it enough to not hate her?  
Ms. Shrill................sigh..............

Well, Calvin couldn't knock success. How can you?  Ms. Shrill led the cheerleading team of the great city of Needsville to a state championship.  It was obvious she wanted another championship for the cheerleaders.  Calvin guessed that she was riding very high in the community.  It's a simple and well known fact that it's easier to ask for more when you are winning and harder to ask for $$ when you are a loser.  Ms. Shrill wasn't a  loser. 
Plus, Cindy was selected for the cheerleading team.  Cindy was physically and mentally strong. About the only way that Cindy wouldn't be a successful marine biologist would be if she got pregnant before the age of 21.  He saw his daughter in action.  He should know more about his daughter and the rare times she hung out with boys.  Maybe, it wasn't so rare.   Yet, from the times he witnessed it, she was very decisive, very strong and well....her daughter was pretty smart with boys her age.  Ms. Shrill bragged and bragged at the 1st meeting how she went to students' parties.  She talked about kicking girls off the cheerleading team each and every year.  He sure hoped she was telling truth.  Was she bullshitting or telling the truth? Yeah, he WISHED Ms. Shrill would attend a party(s) Cindy went to.  He really, really did!! He highly doubted that would occur her freshman year, Cindy was a freshman, after all, she wouldn't be going to parties.  
As Calvin kept thinking about this awful financial situation, he figured there were only 3 ways all this fucking $$ that Calvin and Gloria paid to Needsville High School Cheerleading would be worth it:
1.  Cindy does fine the 4 yrs as cheerleader and gets a humongous scholarship that would be equal or greater than all that damn $$ her parents poured into Needsville High School Cheerleading. 
2.  Ms. Shrill goes to a party where Cindy is, admonishes her into doing something different and saves Cindy from a car accident that would have badly hurt or killed her. 
3.  Ms. Shrill goes to a party where Cindy is, admonishes her into doing something different and prevents Cindy from getting pregnant.  
So, between Calvin, Gloria and Ms. Shrill's attentiveness to Cindy, his daughter would likely get her diploma in safe condition and in one piece. Merely being safe, merely getting a damn diploma wasn't worth $5,000 spent over 4 damn years ! 

All that other stuff Ms. Shrill bragged that she would do for her daughter and the rest of the cheerleaders was bullshit, pure and simple!  
1. How she was going to make the cheerleaders have a stronger work ethic!  (Just so much specious bullshit!) What she wasn't telling the parents and cheerleaders was that while she might instill a work ethic and discipline on the adolescents, there were over 50 ways to instill a good work ethic and discipline on kids. Both parents were living proof of that.  As a 26-year veteran at one of the largest metropolitan hospitals in Chicago, Gloria was one of the best nurses that hospital had.  He wasn't  exaggerating; smart people knew how incredibly difficult being a nurse was at that hospital. Every year that big hospital put more and more demands on those that worked there.  This occurred 25 consecutive years! Not only was Calvin's wife faced with a number of tough decisions each and every shift she made as a fulltime nurse; Gloria made the right decisions !!!
Calvin didn't pat himself on the back very often but every boss he had in the last 10 years complemented him on his work ethic.  Calvin became a legal writer in a website that is read across the nation.  Calvin engineered a refinancing of the family's mortgage and put together all the paperwork needed without Gloria's help.  All she had to do was show up at the closing.  Calvin had been a board member for a local governmental body for over a decade. Calvin earned the confidence of his neighbors by hard work.  Calvin thought and used money-saving actions that his parents hadn't dreamed of.  
 Furthermore, Cindy was showing all the signs of learning a very good, strong work ethic with or without her DAMN cheerleading coach! 
2. How Ms. Shrill would encourage Cindy and her other cheerleaders to do well in school. Bullshit again!  No one had to tell Cindy how to do well in school ! Cindy at 14 was smart enough to pass a lot of college's freshman courses (let alone high school).  Why?  Because his daughter worked hard at school each and every year since 1st grade!
His daughter asked Calvin to quiz her 5-10 years ago so she would do well on tests.  Now, Cindy was so smart, she didn't need his help and was doing better on her tests. More importantly, chances are that Cindy won't need her damn coach to tell her EVER how she should do well in school.  
3.  How Ms. Shrill would make the cheerleaders into well prepared young women.  Again, there's 50 ways to do that. If that happens, yippee, but to make it sound like, to imply, insinuate and pontificate that being on her squad was one of several ways to be well prepared was once again bullshit.  Calvin was in far more job interviews than Ms. Shrill.  Calvin could interview circles around that sanctimonious, haughty bitch.  Calvin read Ladders website, read what What Color Is Your Parachute, was a better writer.  Calvin could damn well counsel his daughter on how to be well prepared for a number of things, ESPECIALLY a job search! 
Those were the only 3 ways all that damn money was worth it.  It was only a matter of time before the family went bankrupt.  Maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years, they were heading the same way they ended up back in 2003.  To avoid bankruptcy, it would take his wife finally seeing the light about Aldi, stop pissing their money away on pets, vet bills, reducing the air conditioning in the summer, not firing up the furnace so damn much in the winter, or maybe Arthur or Cindy getting rich 15 years from now and help them out financially.  He had NO RIGHT to expect that out of his two kids. 
Then, Calvin came to a sadder, darker revelation that he suspected years ago.  There were no parents on the cheerleading team living below the poverty line.  That was extremely obvious.  
It was possible that a few of the cheerleading parents were rich.  He wasn't sure, but he knew from when his son was on the football team that there were football parents who lived in near-mansions. (All because of very work, of course!)  Nearly all the parents, including Calvin and Gloria, were in the middle class.  But he learned from his Sociology class that there was a "lower middle class" and an "upper middle class".  There were undoubtedly parents from the upper middle class.  There were parents that had no problem giving Ms. Shrill her damn money and were grateful that she would engage their daughter in a relatively safe and productive environment.  They were worrying about the summer vacation (contrary to Cindy's family), than they were what they paid for cheerleading.  
Finances were sometimes a mere matter of arithmetic.   Gloria and Calvin didn't make enough money to pay their bills.  Forking out about $1,200 was hurting their finances even worse.  That wasn't a complaint; that was arithmetic, Calvin could prove it!!  There were no signs that Gloria was learning how to save more money.  Calvin was in the best paying job of his life, yet the family was having more financial problems than expected.  They had to pay out of their pocket Arthur's entire upcoming college semester tuition because of Arthur's academic mistakes. Scarce time and money was being spent on another grandniece's college expenses, because Gloria said so.  If he didn't want a divorce, there wasn't shit Calvin could say about that. 
Calvin didn't want to make the realization that his daughter being on the cheerleading team was a matter of class and wisely avoiding crushing expenses.  He really didn't, but what a sorry society we lived in!!  We don't even have excellent presidential candidates to choose from this year.  The Olympics might hurt someone from merely drinking the water.  How much worse was 2016 going to get??
Calvin figured it was only a matter of time until he got pissed off with Ms. Shrill's new demands.  Of course, that happened.  There was a misunderstanding in June and an odious email in July. UGH! It was so bad that Calvin had no choice after his dear daughter asked him to but to get his brothers and sisters involved.  He never asked to be a salesman.  Being one for the cheerleaders made him want to vomit all over Ms. Shrill.  Oh gee, there's a 4th instance where the cheerleading money might worth it, but, no, it really wasn't.  We were talking about over $1,000 after all! 

When it was all said and done with, was their daughter really happy??  No, she yelled at her mom repeatedly that summer.  She yelled at her to the point that Gloria cried once.  She frequently seemed to need money from Calvin.  Wait a minute!!! Wasn't that money demand supposed to be used to pay down a credit card?? Was it really meant for you, Cindy? Does the world really revolve around you?  Lots of fathers brag and describe their daughters as princesses.  Well, who the HELL DIED and made Cindy a Queen??  A usurping adolescent queen in an unhappy family! 

to be continued 


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One Leading, Others Trying to Follow

One Leading, Others Trying to Follow,  Part 1  (a fictional story!)

In a suburb called Needville, somewhere in the United States, this small city was notable for having a sizeable number of upper middle class, hard-working people, and, in some parts of Needville, there were even rich people.  Yet, a majority of the other people in this city were less prosperous (and most as hard or more hard working then the more fortunate).  This included Gloria and Calvin Grapple.  The Grapples have two teenagers, a boy and girl.  The boy chose to be in football during high school, enjoyed some middling success and was now in college.

Cindy Grapple was in soccer and cheerleading when she was in middle school.  Her parents believed that, if she became a cheerleader starting her freshman year at Needville High School, it would be  similar to their experiences when she was a middle school cheerleader.  They figured that it would be noticeably more challenging than cheerleading before.  Since Cindy was going to a public high school, certainly the school would help fund the cheerleading squad.  At worst, they would spend a three-figure sum, definitely not more.

When the first cheerleading meeting occurred, Calvin and Cindy went to the meeting.  Ms. Shrill the coach, the spokesman and indisputable leader of the Needville High School CHEERLEADERS began to speak.  Rumor had it that she was a distant cousin to Peter Gabriel; the artist who Calvin loved. The resemblance was literally in her eyes (just like his famous song!).  At the meeting, a little girl about 2 years shrieked, cried, squawked and verbalized during the entire meeting. Even worse, although Ms. Shrill emailed parents telling them the meeting was an hour long, the meeting was an hour and forty minutes long.  Calvin also noticed that Ms. Shrill's daughters, who were assistant coaches to the cheerleaders,  talked louder-than-quietly while Ms. Shrill consistently ignored them. "Wait a minute," Calvin thought, "if those two were her daughters, wouldn't it seem logical that her daughters and very important assistant coaches to the squad would give their mother their undivided attention?!?" Definitely not, as he witnessed the little girl crying and squawking, and her daughters talking for all attendees to hear and witness.

To Calvin's horror, Ms. Shrill passed out to all attending parents 7 pages of paper filled with information, events and demands.  To Calvin's shock, he read one of the astonishing pages and then heard Ms. Shrill talk about the very same horrifying set of facts!!  Calvin and his wife were absolutely deluded thinking that cheerleading might cost $200, or maybe even some figure approaching $500.  No, it would not cost $500.  No, it would not cost $700 or $800!  First, it would cost over $1,000, and Ms. Shrill demanded this sum in $155 installments each and every month.  Second, there was a cheerleading raffle costing another $150.  Then, there was camp that would cost an additional amount.  Later, he learned of more and more giving that parents MUST DO!

Unfortunately, Calvin was unemployed.  He saw these monetary amounts and panicked.  He started to breathe faster, but he couldn't breathe too fast or too loud, because his daughter would look at him in unsympathetic disgust and elbow him.  Cindy would order her hapless father to stop at once.  He was embarrassing her!  That's what he knew what would happen, and he frantically kept his cool amid an increasingly louder two year old, gabby assistant coaches and an increasingly didactic Ms. Shrill.

"How could this happen!" Calvin wondered.  "How could I pay a total of $684 for his son, Arthur's extracurricular activities?  That included EVERYTHING HE WAS IN FOR 8 DAMN YEARS!!! It included when he was in community football (ages 9-13); that included him being in football and basketball for four years, that included his participation for two years in the school plays!!! How and why is this happening?  This cannot be happening!!"    Then he thought of the line in Tori Amos' song "Cornflake Girl"......"this cannot, this cannot, this cannot be happening to meeeee.  You bet your life it is! YOU BET YOUR LIFE IT IS!!!"  Calvin overlooked the fact that what Tori Amos described in that song was much worse than being woefully overcharged for an activity whose costs outstripped its benefits by a country mile.

Calvin felt increasingly worse during those long 100 minutes of a baleful meeting.  His shock and anxiety grew into stomach pain and dizziness.   He feebly wrote not one, but three checks payable to Needville High School Cheerleading.  He told Cindy in no uncertain terms to get out of the high school at once because the pharmacy would close in a few minutes.  He would have to race over there to feel better.....somehow, some way.

Calvin and his wife violated a basic law of life:  look before you leap.  They didn't know THE COST before the meeting.  No one told them.  They realized that one thing was impossible to tell their strong-willed, successful, stubborn, audacious daughter.  They could never tell their daughter, "Cindy, now that we know the facts, you will have to quit cheerleading before it starts."  They both realized that there were many things right that they did as parents of Cindy.  Cindy was smarter, more confident and more accomplished than her father was at 14.  Cindy also never, ever worked as hard as Calvin did on his father's farm when he was a kid.  Sadly enough, Calvin lamented the fact that Gloria and him said "no" to Cindy too few times.  Calvin recalled what his wise and successful father told him forty years earlier, "The more a kid gets, the more a kid demands."

Calvin was unemployed.  How would Gloria and him afford all their expenses when they weren't making ends meet now?  Sometimes, Calvin felt like he was the only one to remember the shameful, humiliating bankruptcy they endured 13 years ago.  When he saw his wife take his son, Arthur, shopping for groceries, he looked at their receipts and see that they spent between $180-$250 each and every week.  He gave up a long time ago trying to convert his wife to go to Aldi and not that other expansive god damned grocery store that they frequent every week.  Hell, about 26 pitched fights about overspending on groceries nearly led to their divorce.  Gloria won the fight.  Calvin was trying to figure out how many years it would take until they filed bankruptcy again.  After the meeting, after leaving the pharmacy and buying more sleeping pills and antacid, Calvin trudged to their locked front door while Cindy insipidly skipped ahead of him.
"Hurry up, Dad! Unlock the door!" commanded Cindy.


Calvin felt like he had been beaten up for 2 long hours as he struggled to the door to let them inside the sad house.  Yet, he didn't realize until later that things would only get worse.  In the worst meeting that he ever suffered in his fiftysome years, he started to realize that he was beginning to feel like Ms. Shrill's  bitch!

Then, he thought of a memorable video he saw.  Holy shit!  Ms. Shrill not only reminded him of Peter Gabriel; actually, Ms. Shrill kinda sorta reminded him of Robert Tilton. Check out    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unhqk-sAtZ4  Sure, she shouted much less than Rev. Tilton.  However, there was the sanctimonious "GIVE US MONEY! WE ARE A GOOD CAUSE!" theme in both places.  Ten days before, after sending out twentysome resumes and making some calls in his quest for a new job, Calvin spent a few hours surfing YouTube.THEN HE SAW IT.  "OH, MY DEAR GOD.....," he started to pray.  He wasn’t violating the 2^nd Commandment; he literally prayed at what he just witnessed on YouTube.
Ten days later...after being sickened at this video, THEN he was shocked at Ms. Shrill giving a supposedly-compelling oration to parents and cheerleaders.  And then comprehending   a few similarities   (the numerical amount of money was nearly same, only worse for Calvin and Gloria).

This cannot...this cannot be happening to me!  You bet your life it is!  YOU BET YOUR LIFE IT IS!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unhqk-sAtZ4

Classmates, former friends & strange aberrant behavior !

ok, I have a former classmate. She was extremely well known in our school. She was
editor of the high school yearbook
Volleyball, basketball & track star
Forensics state qualifier all 4 years she was in high school
I could go on and on.
So, not so long ago, she got on Facebook. Ok, so I assume she's socializing with friends and maybe classmates of yesteryear, like the ones in 1981(??)......right?
WRONG ! ! !

No, she is going to accept 9 friends, and all other people are not allowed to "Friend" her.
UPDATE:   In July, 2016, that figure is considerably more.  I DON'T imply she has a lack of friends ESPECIALLY in real life or even Facebook.
But the fact is      there is no button on her Facebook profile that says "ADD FRIEND" So that's my point.

No, I'm not angry.  I'm just amazed that the village she came from bred such a cliquish instinct in her.  She's an undisputed success.  Married a handsome, very good man, has great kids.......and WOW she figured out a way that I never knew existed of limiting her friends on Facebook.
So, I say to her, "bravo and very interesting".

David Bowie....what he means to me

What amazes me about David Bowie (other than, obviously, his music) was the ability to change. When David Bowie was popular in late 60s, at one point, he declared, "I'M GAY ! " Part of his motives was he said he would do anything to get out of the town he grew up in. I was from a little town and felt the SAME way. My town was good, but when I was in high school, I became offended that classmates thought they had me figured out. Now, they treat me great, and I don't have a problem with them at all! I guess it surprised them that I moved from a town of 30 people to a city of less than 3 million (it was 3 mill at one time). I wanted to change from being from a small town. I was paranoid that my parents and older brothers were bossing me around so much that they were trying to turn me into some type of "machine" (not literally), of course.
My older brother spanked me more than both my parents combined, ....REALLY ! I guess was lazy at times......But now the same brother is just fantastic with my kids. My son, Ted, and He were playing word association games. The game was you had to describe a person you knew in 1 word (probably impossible to do accurately.....right??). So Ted asks my brother, "What is Vince in 1 word?"
"REBELLIOUS"
Yeah, I was rebellious in the 70s and 80s, but marriage and being a paralegal ripped a lot of rebellion out of me ! I still have some of it. I liked carrying a sign at the Occupy Chicago rallies. That was fun a few years back.
So let's go back to David Bowie.
He had long hair in late 60s and said he was gay. Then, he was Ziggy Stardust.
Then he changed to Thin White DUKE.
Then he realized he was doing too much cocaine and fired DeFries, his manager at the time, who wanted him to spend tens of thousands of $$$ for not very good reasons.
Remember, I'm saying that he "struck a chord with me", not comparing myself in any way shape or form to him. I mean the guy was so incredibly successful ! !
He actually managed Iggy Pop who lived with him in BERLIN when Iggy Pop made, then released LUST FOR LIFE.
The he changed again and did the SCARY MONSTERS and LET'S DANCE albums; both were AWESOME. He wisely hired the Late Stevie Ray Vaughn to play on LET'S DANCE. Then for the last 30some years he stuck

But Bowie was so DAMN Good at reinventing himself. Late in the 80s he was in Tin Machine with the comedian, Soupy Sales' sons.
Your going the 90s ....into the 2000s. He marries Iman in 1992; they are lovers until DEATH DO THEM PART. You don't hear so much about his being gay...it doesn't even matter anymore. They have a daughter in 2000.
He kicks some major ass with a cover of a Pixie song....sensuous and romantic, awesome CACTUS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag4Mu4IqL1Q
He releases a very good album in 2003 REALITY with an awesome "New Killer Star" & "The Loneliest Guy"
He's happier than ever. You hear about how desperate Bowie's personality was in the 70s in the biography Loving the Alien. He's totally different man in the new Millenium !
He changes. He's much more comfortable and happy with himself with age.
I look at my own life when I was a personal injury paralegal just a few short months ago. Now, I get a new lease on life working at a pretty famous, media-covered law firm. I don't do any personal injury, but class action lawsuits. I do fewer Illinois lawsuits, I do more Federal lawsuits and learn to use PACER.
I wish & hope I could just take Bowie's concept of effectively changing decisively the way my career bends & be a little better as a paralegal.
I still wonder about realizing my potential.
But I know I have to change to experience a LITTLE success.

You know you're old when.........

You know your old when you see a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial &................

Col. Sanders is clearly OLDER than you ! UGH!
The new Col. Sanders is played by Norm MacDonald (a comedian in real life, famous for being part of Saturday Night Live in the 90s, maybe (i believe) who is, in fact, 4 months younger than me. & damn, I could just tell from the picture he was younger!