HONOR CODE FOR WHEN YOU ‘KNOW BETTER’

An ‘honor code’ has always sounded like a ‘pinky promise.’

That’s when someone tells a secret and you hook pinkies to never tell.

Ever.

Is a pinky promise bigger and more important than an honor code?

Hmmmmm?

One is a set of behaviors for a particular job, position, or in the more ambitious, a set of behaviors to live life by.

Like what?

Like the Golden Rule.

You don’t need to crack the Bible, search out Greek philosophers, or chug ayahuasca to understand the golden rule.

Don’t need a hyperlink, hypertext, or a hype man at the pulpit to understand the golden rule.

Or an advisor, an attorney, or bag of money to explain the golden rule.

But you do need a baby boomer blogger to spell it out? Who else? Here we go:

 

Do unto others

As you would have them

Do unto you

 

Treat others how you’d like to be treated 

 

Teach others the way you want to be treated by treating them the same way and go from there.

You get treated down and dirty after giving love and loyalty?

Take a shower and start over. Don’t forget the stain remover, and if that doesn’t work, go to a sixty-grain loofa.

You hold someone in high esteem but they slap you down?

Put some ice on the swelling and stop complaining. It could have been worse.

You are promised the stars and only got a chunk of stinky moon cheese?

Eat up, pal. Everyone else likes it, what’s wrong with you?

Besides, no one is vomiting.

 

When Should You Know Better?

I’ve never stolen a car, or have plans to ever steal a car.

And I’ve never had a car stolen, or heard of anyone talking about their car being stolen.

I do feel fortunate and hope it continues.

But if I was, or had once been, a car thief who worked on spec for international auto traffickers, I might have a different feeling.

In the a same vein, I’ve never been a cat burglar, nor do I have plans to cat burgle.

But if I was, or had been, a cat burglar, and my cat went missing, I’d have a different feeling.

So, follow along, my personal honor code includes leaving cars and cats where they sit.

 

The Gray (Grey) Area

Imagine two married men, buddies who enjoy each other’s company so much that they have an annual Buddy Trip with just the two of them.

And they spend two weeks fishing the west, having the time of their lives.

They’ve got all the updated fish gear, fish radar, fish GPS, and talk about spending more.

Their wives are so happy they have a hobby that is so enjoyable and give them all the encouragement they can throughout the year.

The families gather for a big send-off party the night before they leave.

Imagine one of your friends telling you the story:

 

“The guys pull away in the camper with everything packed and stowed away and drive straight through to Reno where they spend the first week going between the Mustang Ranch and the Bunny Ranch.

“They spend the second week between the Chicken Ranch and Sheri’s Ranch near Las Vegas.

“The drive home takes two days because they stop at lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams and hook the fish they bought in the supermarket to a line and create their fishing story.”

 

The Married Man Honor Code

Wives take their cheating husbands one of two ways.

1. It’s nothing new.

2. My husband is a man-skank.

I’ve been in the presence of a wife who had recently learned her husband was less than faithfully hers.

She was crushed. It was awful. She ripped herself up with memories and clues that should have tipped her off.

My conclusion?

The husband honor code is be respectable to your wife.

If she could care less, does that green light that fishing trip? Noooo.

If she cares too much? Do you tell her to “calm down?” Nooooo.

 

Think of a bridge you’d never cross, a line you’d never step over.

Never, as in ever.

As in ‘kill me now if I do.’

But you step over that line, you cross that bridge, and no one kills you.

Instead, they forget. That’s what people do, they forget and choose to remember something else, like the ‘good times.’

“We had good times, didn’t we?”

“Probably not as good a time as you had with the whores on 7th Avenue.”

“Why do you always bring that up?”

“Because that’s who you are.”

 

PS:

We all need practice with Forgive And Forget?

 

PS:

Some things are easier to forgive and forget than others.

If you’ve had US Army leadership training within the past fifty-two years, you know better.

If you’ve never caught anything fishy at a ranch, you know better.

But go ahead and explain, explicate, and delineate.

By all means, do decipher, decode, and disentangle the story.

I’m getting sleepy, sooo sleepy, tooo slee. . . (snore)

But, don’t stop because of me.