Monday, March 24, 2008

What, not how

As I made a late night trip to the store tonight, I listened to a show on CNBC. Mike Rowe, of Dirty Jobs fame, was a guest talking about what I surmised to be a book of his. The host read what sounded like titles to chapters, all of which sounded like platitudes. Some were quite funny, but one struck a chord and I thought I'd share it with all.
The title was "Think about what you are doing, not how." He recounted being a music student and flubbing a piece in a concert and hearing his teacher tell him to concentrate on what he was doing, not how. It struck me that is the secret to my methods for public speaking, although I'd never put it into words as eloquent as those. And though it is a simple thought, it is one that most do not seem able to grasp.
Most people seem to approach public speaking worried about how they are going to appear to others. So gripped are they by the fear they will be perceived foolish that they lose the ability to be natural, and thus cause their very fears to come true. Once naturalness is lost the person is forced to fit themselves into an imagined persona and they become the laughing stock they were so trying to avoid. Don't believe me? Try this experiment. Find a voice recorder and record yourself saying something. Then listen back. I'll bet you try to sound like a radio personality. You drop your vocal tone a couple octaves and put on your suave voice. And when you listen to it, you will recognize how ridiculous you sounded trying to sound cool and normal.
This brings to mind the old adage, pride goeth before the fall. It also brings to mind something I was told when I was learning a foreign language. I was told I was bound to make 10,000 mistakes before I could be considered fluent, so I might as well get started and get them out of the way as soon as possible. How does this tie in? Simple, when I ignored the spectre of making a mistake in front of someone else and concentrated on what I was doing I was free to learn. Then, I was free to speak.
Public speaking doesn't necessarily mean making a speech. It can be any activity that requires one to interact verbally with others. It can be telling a joke to friends, or calling out a play in the huddle. So remember to concentrate on what you are doing, there will be time after you are done to guage how you did. This is the best way to break free of the bonds that bind your tongue.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

The Greatest Show Ever

When I was a kid I remember watching the Harlem Globetrotters on ABC's Wide World of Sports. I thought they were the greatest basketball team to ever step foot on the hallowed hardwoods. Why, I wondered, didn't this team turn pro? Surely they would win every single NBA championship! Just look how they handily defeat the Washington Generals!
Many years have passed since ABC uttered that memorable phrase, "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." I have learned much about life, and sports, in that time. Sports continue to be a metaphor for life. Some sports are real, unaltered by greed and commercialism. Some "sports" aren't at all, WWE comes to mind. From this we can learn that there is real and imaginary in nearly everything we encounter.
We took the kids to see the Globetrotters this weekend. It was great entertainment. The Washington Generals continue to be the worst team in professional sports. (They are even worse than the Miami Heat!) Water is still thrown on the audience and there are laughs aplenty. There isn't any good basketball, but lots of outstanding dunks. As long as your expectations are set, there is a good time to be had.

Life as Shirley Temple

There has, it seems, always been a societal fascination with curly, blond hair. I think it must have started with little Shirley Temple. That little girl captured everyone's attention during the Great Depression for being cute and adorable. I think that fascination carries over to this day.
I can think of no other reason for the attention Grace gets out in public. In South Texas I could have explained it in a cultural way. The culture there is predominantly hispanic and blond hair is an oddity. Consequently it draws much attention and in order to ward off the "evil eye" people who have admired something about someone else (hair) will touch it to keep the owner from getting "evil eye." Ok, I understand the sociological phenomena there.
I'd like to understand the phenomena here. Where we take Grace out in public we invariably gets comments from complete strangers about her hair. I really can't find an explanation in the local culture to explain this. What drives people to stop us in the mall, at the store, on the sidewalk and comment on how pretty her hair is? It can only be a nostalgia for the "good old days" of the Great Depression. Those movies of that adorable girl that made everyone forget about the quotidian worries. Those same feelings must be invoked when someone sees Grace's hair. As her parents, we know full well that, while our little angel, she has her less than angelic moments.
I wouldn't trade her for anything, and I want her to experience as much as possible. But I'd like for her to grow up and not dislike something about herself, like her hair.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

When is enough enough?

Most parents have already discovered that their kids have a way of helping them discover depths of patience and sacrifice they didn't realize they had. Heaven knows my parents discovered patience and sacrifice at the hands of myself, and siblings. I, as single me, always thought I'd impose my iron will on my kids and shape them as a sword smith shapes his pieces. Now it is I who is feels in the fire and getting pummeled.
Tonight is an example. I got it in my mind that I would make each of my kids a birthday cake for their birthday. I might use a molded pan, but I would do the decorating. My mom did that for us and I always thought it a nice touch. I got a great start with Grace's first birthday cake. I did a molded Winnie the Pooh. For her second birthday she got a molded Lightning McQueen. Today is Noah's birthday and I was going to use the Lightning cake pan to do his cake. Then we made a 3 hour round trip for a soccer game. Couple the trip with dinner and a game and most of the day was spent. This is reason enough to skip the nobility and succumb to a store bought cake, right?
Well, let's project a few years into the future. Noah is 4-5 and looking at his birthday pictures and notes his 1st cake is store bought, unlike his sisters. He looks at me and inquires, with big, round saucer-like eyes, why it is that he isn't special like his sister. I, being me, will have forgotten we made a day trip to Raleigh and won't have a good excuse. (By the way, that isn't really a good excuse to a 4-5 year old.) Let's face it, there won't be words in human tongue to reassure that little boy.
Back to the present. It is midnight. There lies asleep a boy who would rather eat paper than cake. But I can't look into his eyes in the future and try to explain away his feelings of inferiority that his sister got Daddy's special cakes while he got the supermarket special. The cake tonight might now look like a msterpiece in the morning, but it will be a Daddy special.