52 Random Things I Want My Kids to Know:
Should I Keel Over Tomorrow
By Kurt Hildebrandt
Copyright 2011 Kurt Hildebrandt
Smashwords Edition
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Table of Contents
#2 – “Red on Positive, Black on Negative!”
#3 – There’s rude and then there’s Redbox rude
#4 – Money doesn’t grow on trees, but …
#7 – There are two ‘I’s in ‘Marital Bliss’
#9 – Be prepared to ‘horse’ around
#13 – Arts and letters, oh my!
#15 – “Clean out the lint screen”
#16 – Politics me off sometimes
#21 – Bucket lists are fine, but …
#23 – Stay away from the Procrasti Nation
#25 – Your birthday suits you just fine
#26 – Coffee or beer me please
#29 – Two wrongs should make you write
#31 – Take your dating offline
#33 – Facebook … in moderation
#41 – Don’t be a guilt tripper
#42 – I got your elbow right here
#43 – Better to gift than receive
#46 – WD40 makes the world go around
#47 – Make them an offer they can’t refuse
Coming to grips with middle age at times can be, to borrow a term that has snuck out of my kids' mouths once or twice in recent years, a real bee-otch.
At that point, you barely remember your teens and not that you'd really want to anyway given your underachieving ways and lack of success with the opposite sex on too-much-of-a-regular basis because any time you got around them you acted like the town drunk on a three-day bourbon binge after French-kissing a bee hive.
Then came your twenties which blew right on by without you really considering the consequences of your actions because, heck, you were still a bit naive and why worry about the future when it seems so far away. Besides, you still had great hair and tucking the ends of your pants inside the pant leg really made everyone else seem un-hip and out of fashion.
Next you slide into your thirties and you might hesitate to contemplate life on occasion after say... a viewing of "Dead Poets' Society" on late night cable or running into an old high school "girlfriend" with you on a beer buzz and her in complete denial about going out either of those two times which you insisted still counted despite arriving and leaving the so called "date" in different vehicles. At that age, you reason thoughts of getting old only happens to old people ... and at that age you're not getting old, you're getting better...or so you've convinced yourself.
On the eve of your 40th birthday, it seems as if life changes in an instant. Well, it did for me anyway. Staring at the clock in my bedroom that night like some sort of death row prisoner, I swear I felt my muscles atrophy a little bit with each minute ticking off in the countdown to forty-dom and my bones get a little less dense the higher the numbers went up...11:51...11:52...11:53...
Now don't get me wrong. Life is far from over when you reach your forties, but pick up the obit page in your local newspaper and you'll find out that not too long ago it was a once-an-every-couple-month thing to see someone your age listed there. At least it was in my small-town paper. Now in my fifth decade of life, it’s moved up to a few-times-a-week thing and will become more frequent with each passing year as my peers are put down for the great dirt nap.
As I've gotten older, checking out the local obits, easily available anywhere with an internet connection, has become sort of a twisted part of my daily regimen because more than likely if I don't know the person listed in bold print, I may know one of their surviving children. Prior to my 40s and even 30s, if I knew anyone related to the recently deceased they were usually implied as one of the "many grandchildren". Now they're a name.
Working at small-town newspapers for nearly 20 years like I have, you can't avoid having to cover tragic stories of people dying way too young and in the wake of that tragedy sometimes remains children left to navigate through the waters of their lives with one or both of their parental rudders missing. Thinking about what lies ahead of them leaves those of us on the outside shuddering because we know the fragility of life means it could very well be any one of us in that scenario.
I'm not sure why, but it seems like I've been taking more of a personal inventory of my life as I approach the top of the aging hill, that is if I were to live to 90 and the road peaks at the halfway point. For the math impaired, that means I'm nearing 45 years of age.
Then, on what had been a seemingly non-descript night of shut eye, a perhaps life-altering moment occurred to me in the middle of all things ... a dream. Not a Martin Luther King, Jr., kind of dream but perhaps a message from the subconscious, nonetheless ... or yet a different and less anticlimactic message triggered by a reaction to a bad piece of pizza I had the previous evening.
In the early 1990s movie "My Life," Michael Keaton played a man named Bob Jones who is about to become a father for the first time when he receives the news he has cancer and may never get to know his son or daughter. Faced with the possibility he could miss out on even hearing his child's first words let alone sharing any of his fatherly wisdom, Bob makes a video of himself talking about his life and what he's learned along the way so his child may at least get a glimpse of what their father was like and have at least some sort of paternal influence as small as that might be.
This turned out to be a very workable storyline for a Hollywood movie with all the stereotypical tearjerker moments, and sort of an indirect inspiration for me later in life. I didn't see "My Life" until it came out on video a year or so after it was released and I admit I did get a bit misty-eyed towards the end of the show...especially when his parents finally made his childhood dream come true by arranging for a circus to perform in his backyard on his birthday and of course (warning: spoiler alert!) when Bob's life ends.
I hadn't thought about that movie for long time until it popped up into my sleepy thoughts that night and popped me out of bed without warning when I realized I was playing a character much like Bob. It didn't take long to get a sneaking suspicion that I may be in dream world because, after all, Nicole Kidman was playing my wife and anyone who knows me knows that my real world, make-believe celebrity wife is Jennifer Anniston ... and it has been for years.
Nothing against Nicole because she's a fine actress, but she's never entered into my internal discussion for inclusion on my laminated top 10 list. Don't worry, my wife knows all about the list and doesn't fret about it for one minute because ... well, if you knew what I looked like you'd understand. If not, it's covered later on in these ramblings.
Suddenly awake, I peered around my darkened bedroom for any sign of familiarity to make sure I was still alive.
Heart pounding, but lungs still breathing, I caught a glimpse of those familiar orange-ish digits of the old alarm clock we still use which sets upon the night stand on my wife's side of the bed -- 3:54 a.m. it read.
I quickly gathered myself and laid back down in bed. I recall it was comforting being able to feel the warmth of the spot on our pillow top mattress I had just sprung out of and hearing my wife's rhythmic breathing pattern had a calming effect as well. I knew, even though a few hours of sleep were still up for grabs before the alarm would jolt me back into the reality of another work day, that salvaging any sleep would be a lost cause.
It was then I began to question myself, "What if this was THEE big one and I was actually dying?" The thought of life immediately ending was painful enough, but then the realization that there was so much else I wanted to tell my kids, to teach my kids, to show my kids ... well, it hit me like a Mike-Tyson-in-the-Hangover right cross and I almost curled up in the fetal position. Thankfully the common sense transplant I had on my wedding day (when I dittoed her "I do"tto) took control and I realized I should do something about it ... and fast.
So instead of trying to force sleep upon myself, I did the only thing a good writer, and apparently mediocre ones do, and that’s stumble through my darkened house to my computer in the basement office to record all of my immediate thoughts as quickly as possible to lay the groundwork for something bigger. Oprah talks about those "ah-ha!" moments in life, and apparently mine came courtesy of a movie character named Bob.
The inspiration flowing from my fingertips onto the keyboard wasn't exactly "Chicken Soup for the Soul"-like...more like "Beef Stew for a Guilty Subconscious".
Unfortunately a lot of my life skills were acquired on my own, especially after my early childhood. As wonderful as my relationship with my own mother was and still is, my relationship with my late father deteriorated as we got older to the point where I blocked out the valuable pieces of advice I did gain from him. It wasn't until long after he was gone that those useful tidbits resurfaced at the most unpredictable of times.
I, myself, became a father for the first time the evening of March 11, 1998, and at the time I was as excited, yet equally as frightened, as I've ever been in my life which was subsequently matched two other times with the birth of my daughter and my youngest son. In the time since I put pen to paper on my oldest's birth certificate on the spot where it's says "Father's Name", thus stamping my certificate of acceptance into Dadhood, I thus began a journey to help nurture these three beautiful, yet often challenging little beings and teach them the ways of the world.
Should my life end prematurely, it dawned on me there is so much more I want to tell them about, but the requisite eight-hour work day and all the other commitments one makes when they play the role of "family man" it can make finding teaching time difficult.
My own sense of panic set in as I envisioned even on my deathbed, if I were fortunate to even have one, not being able to cram a lifetime of my own experience and wisdom into one last conversation, because there would be goodbyes to say, tears to shed and last breaths to take.
It was then I came upon a Liam-Neeson-in-the-movie-"Taken" realization that "what I do have are a very particular set of skills; skills I have acquired over a very long career," that could aid me in the process of teaching my own children (and maybe the children of others) to become informed on some possibly insignificant things in life but some I feel are worthy of mentioning should I not make it to tomorrow. Anyone can teach the kids the basics in life they'll need to know should I depart tomorrow, but there are observations I personally want them to know and when they are exposed to them it is my hope that they learn them from me.
Having worked in journalism in some capacity over the past two decades, albeit on and off at times, one thing I've accomplished is the ability to crank out copy. So, ignoring the obvious risk of hand and/or finger injuries associated with night typing, I began this journey of me passing on the torch of somewhat useless knowledge and wisdom to my children and beyond (the world can never have enough Buzz Lightyear references).
This isn't a list of the obvious such as "look both ways before you cross the street", "keep your hands inside at all times," "wash your hands before every meal" and the other mundane little rules pounded into your head from the time you slide through the birth canal into the uncharted-to-you waters of life. These are unique pieces of advice no parent will ever explain to you unless they've lived them and trust me, these are all based upon experience.
"Why 52?" you ask.