It’s hard, as a parent, to avoid doing too much for my child.  For one thing, I hate watching her struggle.  It’s difficult to not step in and “right the ship” whe she can’t complete what she has set out to do, no matter how big or small the task.

It’s also tough for me as a perfectionist.  I’ve tried over the years to back away from a tendency to “tuck in the corners” of other people’s beds (speaking metaphorically, of course; I hate making beds).  I’ve forced myself into accepting the reality that life consists entirely of things that aren’t quite up to the highest standards.

I sat in church Sunday listening to a guest speaker named Johnny Evans speaking about encouragement, and he started down a path I thought I could complete before he did.  As he spoke of watching his daughter struggle running a race, I felt as if he was going to say that he ran out on the track, scooper her up in his arms and ran the end of the race with her in his arms.  That’s not where he went, though, and I’m glad to hear it.

How the story ended is unimportant to what I’m going to eventually get to in this post.  What stood out to me wasn’t that his young daughter was in a race, or that she was falling way behind everyone else, or that her partner in the race ultimately became an encouragement to her by jogging next to her and speaking words of encouragement to build her up for a relatively strong finish.  What stood out was the realization I came to: we, as parents, should never, ever attempt to finish the “race” for our children.  We are the trainers.  We prepare them for the journey, but a good parent knows when his or her role stops, and the child’s role starts.

If we weren’t all forced to learn how to do things on our own, we’d all still be getting fed by our parents.  We’d have a bunch of six-foot-tall, post-pubescent adults being carried around on our parents’ hips.  Instead, our parents equipped us for the future, but let us live through the highs and lows on our own.

So we tie bibs around our kids’ necks.  We show them how division works.  We give them a helmet, knee pads and a push down the street.  But the line between good parenting and coddling exists at the point where we hand them the spoon for the first time, or tell them to do their homework, or let go of the bike seat.

The fall will hurt, and we can’t absorb the pain for them.  But, once they learn to balance the bike, they can ride on their own.

Back to the race, and the metaphor that jumped out in my head: as parents, we run the first leg of the relay, not the last.  We do not take the baton and try to make up ground; we give it our all to give them a good lead, and let God take them to the finish line.

A story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reinforcing a growing, frightening trend in school systems around the country: students are not allowed to completely and utterly fail.

The concept, according to the article, is to “give kids a chance” to recover when they’ve screwed up for an entire grading period, giving them a grade no lower than 50 percent on any quiz, test or exam.  That means that they never are lower than 50 percent away from perfection, even if they answered the question, “What is Sacajawea?” with “A bag full of jawea.”  (I wish I could claim ownership of that joke, because it’s flippin’ hilarious, but I can’t.)  While giving kids a second chance is a good idea in theory, it’s a horrible, horrible idea in real life.

Now, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to want to lynch me here, but I believe in letting a child fail.  One of the most important skills a person can learn to prepare themself for adulthood is the ability to cope with failure.  Outside of chemical imbalances, I would bet my life that the number one cause of depression in teens is their inability to understand that screwing up happens, and the only way to fix the problem is to try harder.

The best analogy here is the U.S. automakers.  They’ve royally screwed up their standing in the world auto market by producing inferior products on the premise of “status quo is good enough.”  What ultimately happened is they produced crap long enough to allow Japanese makers to surpass them in quality and take a near-stranglehold on U.S. auto sales.  Now, they carry such a stigma of crap that they’re struggling to regain market share in an economy that is refusing to buy the overweight, fuel-consuming vehicles that have been a trademark of U.S. design for decades, even when the cars are now as good or better than their foreign counterparts.

But, rather than letting the companies fail or allowing one of the major manufacturers to purchase another, the U.S. government is proposing ways to bail them out.  In other words, the people who are supposed to be looking out for the better good of the U.S. are recommending we simply scold the problem child of the economy who broke the neighbor’s window, and then pay to replace the window with no consequence to the one(s) who created their own problems to begin with.  The only message that sends is, “we can’t fail, no matter how hard we try.”  And, in doing so, the government is in no way giving the automakers a reason to fix the disease of failure.

It works the same way with kids: if you coddle them while they can still be coddled, they won’t have a clue as to how to fix their real failures when they are adults and will be held fully accountable for their actions.  Under the sudden stress of failure, a situation in which they never found themselves as a child, I’d wager most of them will crack.

So, by telling a kid they will receive half-credit for no effort, we are setting them up to expect that.  If a recent high-school graduate gets his first job after receiving his diploma at a school where zero equals half, do you think that kid is going to put in a full day’s hard work?  Probably not, because they’ve been taught that “good enough is good enough.”  But, in the real world, there are no free rides (except for some shady people under the current, poorly managed welfare system, but that’s a different issue altogether).  Great gets you a promotion, good enough gets you a paycheck until someone better than you comes along, and expecting a second chance lands you in the unemployment line.  That’s how the real world works, and school is supposed to prepare us to handle the everyday challenges we will face in life.  This does exactly the opposite, and contributes to the sense of entitlement so many people have in the world today.

News flash: nobody owes you anything.  I don’t care if you are black or Native American looking for reparations.  I don’t care if you are earning an adequate wage with a merely adequate effort.  No one owes you a dime for what happened to your ancestors, and no one owes you a pat on the back for simply doing your job.  Heck, no one even owes you a promotion for going above and beyond; this is a free-enterprise economy, and if you don’t like your situation, you are responsible for making it better.  Not your boss, not your neighbor and certainly not Uncle Sam.  And in order to be prepared to improve your life, you need to be challenged in school, not pampered.

There’s another downside to this mountain-like issue, too: by flattening out failure, you are cheapening success.  If it isn’t as hard to succeed, people won’t give it the extra effort.  And, thanks to decades of caving to minority factions of the population who think giving a kid an F is harmful to his or her “fragile” ego and to those who believe that spanking lowers self esteem, we’ve spiraled rapidly into nearly unfightable crime and standings in math, science and language that are so low in the developed, modern world that it’s a wonder we’re still even considered a world power.  By attempting to bring up the average through artificial means, we’ve dumbed down the top end of the supply of intelligence.

Bottom line: the failures of those at the bottom end — and I say this with heartfelt apologies (but no remorse) even about the ones who give it an honest effort but still struggle — should not carry a bill that is paid for by those at the top end.  Those who excel should not be hindered by those who don’t.  Period.

I enjoy my life.  There’s not much I have to complain about, aside from a pending divorce.  But of the few things about my life that I could actually say suck — and it’s generally a relative concept, as in, “relative to winning a million dollars on the same day a Belgian supermodel falls in love with me, not having a garage is kinda crappy” — there’s one that stands out and truly pains me every day.  It’s the fact that I can’t save the world.  By God, I’ll try my best, but I’m just me.  And the only man who can do it hasn’t come back yet.

But, yes, not being able to fix what’s wrong truly burdens my heart.  I see so much war, crime, bigotry and just general hate in the world, and I want to tell these people that it is the meek, humble and compassionate who shall inherit the earth, not the dictators and warmongers.

But there is something I can help fix, and I’m going to do all in my power to do so.  And you can help.

You all know I’m a single father, and we’re hundreds of miles from our nearest family.  My life revolves around that little girl, and I spend most of my time worrying about her.  When she has the sniffles, my heart aches for her.  When she cries for her “Dedo,” I want to cry too.  All minor, passing afflictions, to be sure, but she’s not just someone who depends on me; she’s part of me.

It’s that build-up that brings me to Katie Fitch, a beautiful little three-year-old from Florence, South Carolina.

See, Katie has hepatoblastoma.  Don’t try to say it, or you might wind up with your tongue in a splint.  But, essentially, it’s a cancerous tumor of the liver.  Cancer.  In a three-year-old.

My next-door neighbor and close friend is a pediatric nurse who deals with cancer patients all the time.  I have no idea how she can see this stuff on a regular basis and be anything more than a basket case for her entire shift — I merely read a story about someone and almost broke down crying in part because of the innocent child being afflicted with such a horror, and also because I can’t do anything about it.

Katie’s family is taking donations; you can contribute directly from the Web site they’ve set up for her.  I ask anyone who can give to do so.  Help make a future for someone who doesn’t even really have a past yet.  I implore you to find some way to scrape up a donation, even if it’s only a few bucks you scraped together by foregoing a cup of coffee, a Big Mac or a pack of cigarettes.  And please, tell your friends and family.

None of us can save the world.  But if everyone tried to save a small slice of it, we wouldn’t just save it — we’d make it infinitely better.

You can read all about young Katie and make a donation at KatieFitch.com.

Do I really look that old?
We often develop close relationships with the people around us at our jobs.  Those relationships, though (in Information Technology, at least) are usually tightly based on alcohol consumption, and not so much on actual personal knowledge of one another.  On my birthday a week ago, at a small celebration in my honor held by my manager and open to my coworkers, a friend speculated on my age.

He guessed 35.

D’oh!

I decided to let him live, but that wasn’t a decision I came to lightly.  I think it was based largely on the fact that there were several witnesses (if you so much as say “cake” in an IT department, you better have experience running with the bulls in Pamplona).

And They Partied On…And On…
I vowed this year that I would make up for last year’s birthday — the only way my 27th could have sucked worse is if someone had kicked me in the cajones, repeatedly, the entire day.  So, with that in mind, the party kicked off on Monday, August 11.  A trip to the beach — the Outer Banks is my new Favorite Place On Earth™ — launched the festivities.  A week of U.S. Olympic triumph, presumably in my honor, then ensued.

We won’t go into all the details — no, there was no debauchery, but there was food, music, general fun to be had by all, and even a $10 prize for finishing third in a beer pong tournament at a local bar.  I finally let the party give up the ghost on Monday, August 18, sometime around 11:45 p.m.  And, I’ve got to say, I think it ended a little too soon.  I had a semi-crappy 19th birthday too, so I still have a little bit of karmic make-up to do.

Just as I did at Christmas, I want to take this time to remind you all exactly what it is we're celebrating.  Amid your colored eggs, your baskets full of candy and even your array of gifts, remember this day was set aside to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his subsequent ascension to Heaven (which, of course, happened weeks later).  The Easter Bunny may have visited your house, but have you let God in too?

We teach our kids about the Easter Bunny.  He has nothing — nothing — to do with the meaning of the holiday aside from the fact that the Christian holiday of Easter was a "mash-up" of the Christian celebration of the resurrection and the pagan ritual of fertility each spring — celebrating a goddes called "Eastre" or "Oestre" depending on your preferred spelling.  It was done that way by the church because potential pagan converts were willing to give up their gods, but not too thrilled about kissing their celebrations good-bye. 

People who celebrate fertility with orgies, and who don't like to stop partying.  Wow, sounds like college.  But I digress.

The point is that most kids who aren't Muslim or Buddhist can likely identify the mainstream view of Easter.  Fewer, probably, can identify the real meaning of the holiday — even in Christian families.  So I challenge you to sit with your children today, no matter their age, and explain to them why we are celebrating today.  Explain to them that the candy and toys and colored eggs are nice, but this would still be the most important day of the Christian calendar even without them.  Today is bigger than Christmas, people: on Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus; on Easter we celebrate his ultimate conquering of sin and death, so we can each have the chance to accept his love for us and, ultimately, join him in Heaven when we, too, rise above death. 

Mike,making an argument in favor of shipping jobs "across the pond?"  Absolutely, if it's the right thing to do.

I'm a Republican.  I'm a purist conservative.  I believe in what the Republican Party was originally based on: smaller government, less spending, lower taxes, minimized meddling in the affairs of the people, and leaving most decision-making to the state and municipal governments, among many other things.  But we also see the need for strong domestic businesses and a simple economy that desires healthy, legal competition and fair prices.  Unfortunately, the "conservative base" has been left behind by the Republican politicians.  Man, do I ever hate politicians.

I'm driving to a point here: Boeing recently lost a military contract to develop a new line of refueling aircraft to a conglomerate known as EADS — which includes French company Airbus (they, of the Airbus 380 double-decker luxury airliner fame).  Hoo-boy, was the "political right" up in arms about that one.  And so were the Democrats.  To them, it was the equivalent of outsourcing jobs for pennies on the dollar.

This is where the politics come in to play: people looked at the 35,000-foot view (given that this is about aircraft, I swear that was an unintended pun) of the situation: a French company would be building U.S. military aircraft.  How rude.  How cruel.  How Un-American.  How soooo not-apple-pie.

But for the people with their heads on ground-level, and facing the right direction, this was the right thing to do.  First of all, this isn't about shipping jobs overseas; in fact, EADS has promised to build the aircraft, or at least large portions, in a plant they agreed to build in Alabama as part of the contract.  The contract is actually listed under Northrop-Grumman, a long-time defense contractor who will likely be providing a majority of the avionics.  Guess where N.G. is based?  Yup, here in the states.  In fact, the only thing Airbus is providing, as best as I can tell, is the airframe — the "body," basically.

The reasons go beyond this, though.  For one thing, Airbus has, as of late, built a higher-quality aircraft at a more-bang-for-your-tax-dollar price.  On top of that, Boeing won the original contract in a no-bid situation that ultimately led to the dismissal of several top executives who got in deep, steaming crap for conflicts of interest — basically, they did things to win the contract essentially just to line their own pockets.  When all this came to light, several in Washington successfully had the contract nullified and the bidding was re-opened, this time with Airbus allowed to play the game.

Here's where the Democrats had a field day: People working for John McCain, the Republican nominee for the Presidential election this fall, were in the group lobbying to have the contract re-opened.  By picking and choosing their facts, they made it sound as if McCain had lobbied to outsource the program.  In reality, his people lobbied in 2004 to have the Boeing contract overturned because of the impropriety of the entire situation.  He wasn't lobbying in favor of a foreign company, he was lobbying against unfair business practices.  And I don't care who you are; you should be ashamed to call yourself a Republican — or a Democrat, or an American, for that matter — if you can actively and openly support unfair business activities.  We built this nation on fair, open trade and markets and healthy competition for customers, even if that customer is the nation itself.

And here's my final point on the matter: Boeing has had a strong upperhand in military contracts for a long time now, ever since N.G. was purchased by EADS.  They have dominated the U.S. airliner market because of the relatively low cost of aircraft in comparison to overseas competitors due to a weakening dollar and other economic factors.  They have become complacent, and quality has begun to suffer.  Ingenuity has fallen by the wayside, the victim of such large dominance in domestic markets.  If you want another example of this, look to Redmond, Washington, where Microsoft has supplied inferior products for years, simply because they are so ingrained in our American culture that the cost of replacing them in the infrastructure is prohibitive.  When competition is severely crippled, and you have the luxury of forced customer "loyalty," quality is generally the first victim.  By awarding the contract to Airbus, the U.S. government has — intentionally or not — quietly but sternly told Boeing that they now have to earn their contracts on quality, not past reputation and "friends in high places."

I don't care what side of the political fence you are on; if you can't see the good in this situation after examining the facts, you simply don't understand the original goal of our founding fathers to create a fair, free nation, free from political squabbling.  And it's the blurred vision we've developed toward that original concept that is now hindering this nation locally and abroad.   It's time to get back to basics, to understand that Capitalism is only good and successful when it is executed fairly, without underhanded favors.

I know I've been away for a little while; it's been a hectic few weeks.  And I know most of you who read this site do so because it's fun to laugh at me being an idiot.  I do it rather well.  But I have to go serious on you for a few minutes.

I feel a serious pain in my heart every day for this country.  We're headed down such a horrid path, and no one is doing a thing about it besides talking.  People condemn the actions of others, only to perpetrate their own crimes against themselves and their peers; political campaigns are filled to the brim with a bunch of wonderful rhetoric, but no real substance or activity.  Now we face a weak dollar, a housing market that would be a buyer's boone if the buyers out there hadn't already mortgaged their families' futures on false hopes of a dream loan, crime and violence are increasing nationwide, and the government that thinks it knows what's best for us is so divided on every issue that they've stalemated themselves.  And now, thanks to an overtly liberal media that pushes the me-first attitude, everyone thinks they are entitled to a hand-out to fix their problems.

Here are the facts, people: you have a responsibility to yourself, your family and your nation.  Yes, there are times when the government needs to give assistance to people; I've benefited from government help, and people to whom I am very close have benefited from it.  It's often very important, and just as often necessary.

However, you live in the Land of the Free; your decisions are yours to make.  And if you choose to sit on your lazy arse and try to collect money from the government without putting any effort forth, you are a leech and a major threat to this nation.  If you are informed that a category-four hurricane is going to hit your city that lies below sea level, you are able-bodied, and you choose not to leave, that's your problem, not mine.  If you failed to research the sub-prime lending vultures out there, and you failed to read the terms of the contract you signed, why should my tax dollars pay for your mistake?

My point is this: man up, people.  Take some responsibility for your own actions.  If you are unable to decide anything for yourself, do the world two favors: stop procreating, and go live in a communist country where the government will make sure you have no decisions of your own to make.  Your lack of personal responsibility is rapidly degrading this nation into a cesspool of the worst kinds of human dredge — blue-collar and white-collar included, there's no distinction in my mind between class when it comes to the scum of the earth. 

And, no, I'm not saying that everyone (or anyone in particular, for that matter) who defaulted on a sub-prime loan is the "scum of the earth."  That's not the implication; what is implied here is that you are responsible for your own decisions and the consequences that come from them.  If you choose to feel the government is obliged to bail you out, that the other 300 million people in this country should be forced to bear the burden of your failure to take responsibility for your actions, you are sadly mistaken.  I am happy to help out those who make an effort to help themselves, but I will not sit idly by and watch my hard-earned dollars continue to support and bail out those who just don't want to get a clue.

With that, I'd like to put something on the table for you: if I ran for President, would you vote for me?  Talk back!

I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas!  I hope everyone has a great day, and I hope we can all look past the presents and the decorations and the commercialism for a little while today to remember what this day is truly about.  And if you need reminded about the true meaning of Christmas, read Luke chapter 2.

"Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord." 

I wanted to let you, my faithful few readers, know that updates will be sporadic for a little while as InvertedMind and the InvertedFamily are sorting through two very private, very personal issues right now.  Some details will come with time, but until the time comes when I feel comfortable sharing, it will remain private.  I can assure you that my sense of humor is still intact, and that my sense of reality is as detached as ever.  However, words of encouragement would be greatly appreciated.

In time, all will be resolved.  Thanks again for visiting regularly, and please keep the entire InvertedFamily in your prayers.