Advanced Parenting: How to outlive your children

A while back, Chris decided to scrapbook my childhood. So a couple weeks ago, she and my sister were digging through the 'Lee box' they got from my mom. Needless to say there were some gems in there, some of which I've put into a slideshow in the sidebar. But then we came across this picture from 1976:That would be my Grandma with my sister and my Dad holding me in his arm. I'm such a narcissistic little dope that initially this picture went into the pile for my sister to sort through, because lets face it, it's not a particularly noteworthy picture of me. But I here's the thing, in general, I see myself as being built like my father. In this picture he is one year younger than I am currently... and it's pretty clear to me that genetically, I have not been invited to the Gardner Gun show.

As the possibility of parenthood becomes more likely, I've been trying to come to grips with some of my adulthood realities, one of which is that I tend to tell people what I want to say, not necessarily what they need to hear. If you watch Scrubs, Dr. Cox is my antithesis. But sometimes you need to tell people things so they'll do the right thing, whether it's the absolute truth or not. That's not a skill I've got fine tuned.

Dad, however, figured it out. Here are two examples from my childhood...
One of the things that my father told me was that real math started at Calculus, and it was just expected in the Gardner house that you would learn Algebra, Trig, etc so that you would have a solid foundation when you got up to real math. Most people live their lives just fine without Calculus, but in this case, I am my father's son. Calculus lets you figure out things that don't go in a straight line. And since the world isn't flat, that's pretty much everything. When someone brings up having difficulty with high school level math, I still fight the urge to say, "Wait till you get to Calc," as if it's a requirement.

The other example is that I was told that Running (cross country or track) is a sport where a person without a lot of innate athletic ability can still be very successful through a lot of hard work. Mind you, this is coming from a guy who could still wear a tanktop in public into his mid-thirties... So I believed through most of high school that if I just kept pushing on, I would eventually obtain this success that has been set aside for those of us who persevere. The point is, although I don't personally believe that "anybody can run if you have the heart" anymore, I was told what I needed to hear at the time. I do, however, have tremendous respect for the sport, and maybe that was ultimately the lesson I was supposed to learn.

This picture has in some ways re-motivated me to at least try to get in some kind of shape. I found out that there's a rock climbing wall on the cruise ship we'll be taking over Christmas. Oh, did I mention we're going on a cruise? ;-) So my immediate goal is to get in good enough physical condition to not feel like a total fool when I try rock climbing. I've never done it before, on real rocks or otherwise, and frankly I suspect I'll hate it. But that's not the point. I want to know for sure.

So to that end I've been doing a lot of upper body stuff at the gym lately. Well, a lot for me anyway and let me tell you ladies, I am super sexy dangling and quivering from the chin-up bar. But I'm reminded of what I like to call "The sticky-lid factor." You can be in great shape and still get owned by a new jar of mayonnaise. I think there's something about my center of gravity, or my natural arm strength (which I apparently got from my mother...) or cosmic justice or whatnot that I will just never get to the point where pullups are easy.

The insult to injury (or my unopenable jar of mayo, if you will) is the fact that even most of my geeky friends have the upper hand when it comes to PE. Granted, I hang out with a 6 foot Korean and an ex-football player, but one of my other friends has a benchpress in his basement and I thought I'd be cool and casually sit down and do a couple reps one night at a LAN party. For the record, when I die, I do not want, "It didn't LOOK that heavy" on my tombstone. But suffice it to say that it took pretty much everything I had plus public humiliation to heave that barbell back on the rack and not just let it drop into my chest cavity. You know, those things would be easier to lift iff'n you just removed some of them weights. I'm just saying...

Stay tuned next time for my latest attempt at killing myself through self-improvement.