BOOMERPDX LIFE LESSONS? #1: MAKE AN EFFORT

Life lessons start with the first one.

One lesson is more than enough to start.

Get that first lesson right and the foundation is set for additions.

#1: Make an effort you’re proud of.

Doing this one thing as a kid shows you’ve learned how to follow directions.

Making a good effort is easier with a good role model. As a grown man with grown man sons, here’s how it works:

Give them chores and supervise from a distance. For example:

“Johnny, remember how we teamed up and swept the kitchen floor together? I want you to sweep up by yourself. I’ll be over here.”

In a perfect world little Johnny brooms up dirt and debris into a pile, or two, before sweeping it all into a dust pan and dumping it into a garbage can.

It’s a repeatable task done with two tools and ends with visible results.

Success is yours.

Ask A Boomer About Their Life Lessons

The older people get, the more vivid their memories of early life. They get more vivid to navigate their way through current screw-ups that aren’t necessarily their fault. But feel like it.

Ask a Boomer if they had jobs around the house growing up.

“My dad had a truckload of chicken shit delivered to our backyard. It was a big backyard that we kids had worn bare playing and running around. The chicken manure was supposed to make grass grow.

“Instead it turned the backyard into a toxic waste dump. I spent the summer shoveling and spreading crap. It was awful. And no grass grew. Actually, the remaining grass all died because the chicken shit was a hot fertilizer. Too hot.”

2

“Did you have jobs around the house growing up?”

“Yes. I had rat patrol. We had a big cat that went in to the woods across the street to hunt rats.

“One morning my mom walked out the front door and stepped on a dead rat. In high heeled shoes. It stuck to her heel, pierced, and she couldn’t shake it off.

“From that morning on I got out of bed, opened the front door to check on dead rats. If there was one, I got a shovel and buried it before my mom left the house.

“One morning the rat wasn’t dead. I opened the door and it tried to come in the house. My dad asked what I was yelling about. We went out the side door together, got the shovel, and he showed me how to pound a rat dead. He handed me the shovel to give it one last whack, then I buried it in the flower bed.”

3

“Did your parents punish you if you didn’t do your chores?”

Boomers love this question because it gives them a chance to show how much they’ve had to overcome with their life lessons. And they turned out fine, just fine. Thanks for asking.

“I had to go outside and cut a tree limb so my dad could beat me for not sweeping the floor good enough.”

“My mom made me give her the belt I got from Grandma for Christmas and she’d whip me with it.”

“My parents had a box with an extension cord, a coat hanger, and a slipper. If we didn’t do our work we had to pick one of the three to get spanked with. The slipper was the worst.”

Early Failures Give Important Life Lessons

The top picture is the insides of an English church, the same church holding Admiral Lord Nelson’s coffin.

The most famous sailor in English naval history is housed below the center piece in the floor.

It’s not Napoleon’s Tomb, but nothing is.

Nelson is remembered in church, which is a better fit.

In what feels like great irony, Saint Paul’s roof sprung a leak. Right over Nelson’s casket. The old sailor got his face dampened like the old days.

The life lessons of Admiral Nelson are how you’ll be remembered after you’ve given your best effort, and it was good enough.

I’m not a fan of dying to give that lesson, but that’s what some heroes do.