Musings at Altitude

It’s amazing what insights you get when you allow a guest blog!  Fortunately, I get the last word, so I want to correct the obvious inaccuracies in the posting by my 14 year old below:

(1) I don’t go to dictionary.com to look for big words, but I do go there to ensure I have accurately spelled most words over 5 letters or any that are not commonly used.  In fact, I have been known to shut books that I have bought if after a page or two there are more than just one or two words that I don’t recognize and certainly don’t know what they mean!

(2) Although in one sense I’m proud of the characterization of me as “hygiene man”, I think every parent will understand that if you don’t ask something constantly, the right behaviors typically won’t be instilled.  Although I’m hopeful that I get a “yes” every time I ask “have you brushed your teeth”, I can’t tell you how many times I get a “uhhhh” as any one of the kids would then turn around and head right back up those stairs to brush for the first time.  I prefer to call this “quality assurance” rather than “hygiene man”.

(3) I stand proudly by my discomfort with not taking a shower every morning.  I just can’t function without one, and I can’t see how others can pop out of bed and feel any sense of readiness for the day’s activities if a shower wasn’t the first stop (after brushing teeth of course) on the way to whatever is first on the daily agenda. 

(4) I plead “no contest” to whether I have rhythm or not (by the way, I had to look up how to spell rhythm).  Actually, I plead guilty, and I certainly did pass on that particular trait to my 14 year old daughter.  Fortunately, she’s so cute the rhythm won’t be what attracts the guys to her.

(5) I plead “not guilty” to being weird.  Of course, I’d need to see all the evidence against me before I’d formally put that plea in if this was a court of law.

(6) And I can’t possibly understand how she came to the conclusion that I share her prissy-ness.  She’s in a class of her own there!

I am thankful that I have descendants that are so openly honest and pointedly critical about my behaviors.  In a way, that makes me very proud of how they’ve been raised and how successful they will most likely be in their lives.

Fortunately though, I don’t have to include them in my will!