OT: What is the Best Advice You've Ever Received?

"Buy low, sell high"

Don't eat yellow snow: Frank Zappa Don't turn the airplane inverted: numerous flight instructors Don't forget that doing the right thing has nothing to do with whether people are looking: my dad

I was a spoiled kid. My dad got me a $8/hour job with a bar buddy who owned a fly by night construction company. I'd just finished my freshman year, so I was invincible, stupid and lazy. My coworkers were two 40-something career laborers with union cards. problem was, this wasn't a union job, so they were working for $5/hour. Those two guys taught me a lot. We were tasked with a particularly miserable job, working down in a hole trying to scrape and shovel out mucky, thick dirt and pass it up in a bucket. I was convinced this was an illogical task that required a more clever solution. One of the guys put his hand down for me to grab and he yanked me out of the hole, and then proceeded to dress me down by simply saying, "there ain't no use in talkin about it. You need to get back in that hole and just DO THE JOB." But instead of letting me go back down, he did it himself, just to show me what a prima Donna I was being. I think of it regularly and often.

Mom: Find a woman with a father figure. Pops: Don't have kids until you meet the woman you'll spend the rest of your life with. Childhood friend Rob: Don't lie on your dick.

"I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never any use to oneself."

- Oscar Wilde

Don't depend on other people or things to make you happy. They can't do it even if they want to. You get the power and responsibility to decide how you feel.

In honor of my Dad, who died on this date 26 years ago:

Once in my early 20's, I was crying in my beer to Dad about a girl who'd dumped me (and was right to do so). I figured he give me some worn-out advice about learning from your mistakes, or about how there are other fish in the sea, or whatever. But Dad just cracked open another Miller Lite and said:

"Willie, don't worry about girls so much. There'll come a point in your life when sex takes a back seat to a good bowel movement."

It took me years to realize what Dad was talking about: how what seems like a huge problem now will actually pale in comparison when life's real, honest-to-God problems come along. He was trying to teach his idiot son about Perspective.

Either that, or about the importance of a high-fiber diet - I'm not sure which.

The best gift you can give your children is to be happy yourself!

Shit happens, life goes on.

I was a little tike, no older than 7 or 8, when my parents decided to switch me to a new piano teacher. The teacher I was leaving was my first piano teacher, and I idolized her, so I got really upset about the change. I remember being up in my room having a moment when my dad came up and had a conversation about change, and how it happens all the time and how I needed to learn to adjust and accept changes. I eventually got over it, had a great experience with the new piano teacher, and every time I'm faced with a life change, my mind inevitably goes back to that conversation my dad had with me. I've gone through a lot of bigger changes since then and have been able to handle them in stride because of that.

You'll know when you are.

She will be ready before you, trust me, they're all the same.  They want their day when they're the center of attention.  If you're not ready, stand firm.  You will be better off for it in the long run.

 

 

When I was single, I came home from work to find two voicemails. One from a cousin saying she wanted to set me up with a friend who would be perfect. The other was from a very cute girl I had met a few months earlier who had been dating a friend of mine. She said she thought she saw me on the subway that day, went over to me to say hi, then realized it wasn't me, but it got her thinking that she should give me a call.

When I spoke to my dad that night, I asked him whom I should call back first.

His advice, "call the girl from the summer back first." Why? "It's obviously a BS story...if she went through that much trouble to find you and come up with a story, that's the one."

He was right, we were married about a year later and have been together for more than 20 years.

BTW, my dad was also right about the subway story being BS...she finally fessed up on our 10th anniversary

You are what your reputations says you are.  It takes a  lifetime to build and a second to destroy.  Best of luck. - my first legal mentor