life lessons

Every year several students tell me that I should write a book that includes the "mostly true" stories that I tell them about the lessons that I have learned from life. Every year a number of new students say it but has it happened yet? No! This might be a way for me to ease into it while hopefully getting both solicited and unsolicited feedback. While some have a moral, some are immoral. Some are practical (like my musings on how to defeat the law of diminishing returns by drinking Coca-Cola) and some might be seen as idiosyncratic (like my wishes regarding the disposal of my dead body). Some are short and some are long. Whatever the case, I hope that what I write will be both entertaining and maybe even helpful.

So lets, begin with a short one: Cute Is in the Eye of the Beholder

One night sitting at the dinner table we were speculating over which child looked most like which parent. Since it is often hard for members of the same family to see resemblances we began talking about what other people said. A lot of people thought that my eldest daughter Alexandra looked like her mother. I had people tell me that they thought Jessika looked like me. Now to truly understand Jessika's reply, you have to have a little background information. Jessika was about three years old at the time. She had curly hair like little orphan Annie only hers was blonde. She had chubby cheeks with a dimple on her left cheek and a cleft in her chin. She was like a little cabbage patch doll. You can imagine then that total strangers would come up to her and fall all over themselves pointing out how cute she was. She was constantly hearing people say "cute, cute, cute, you are soooo cute." So when I say that she looks like me, the wheels in her little brain started to turn. She wrinkled her brow and turned down the corners of her mouth in a puzzled expression as she studied my face. Then, though it was a statement, it was said like a question she said "but daddy, you're not cute."
I wasn't offended then but I think I am now. I know I'm not cute but the only characteristic that I thought that she and I had in common was the cleft in our respective chins. But maybe when people said that she looked like me they were really saying the I was chubby!

I hadn't planned on sharing this one but as I was writing about cuteness it came to mind.

At the age of nineteen, I served a two year mission to Japan for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For a number of reasons, missionaries go out into the cold cruel world in pairs. The older of the two is responsible for training the younger, green missionary who, depending on how fresh of the boat he is, has to rely heavily on the senior companion for help in communication. For the experience that I am about to write about, I had been in Japan for about a month so you can immagine that may linguistic abilities needed work. Still, I was fiercely independent and hated to rely on my senior companion. In this case, I was trying to talk to a Japanese lady holding a baby at her front door. I said "Kodoma wa kowai desu ne." As polite as the Japanese are, her initial expression showed horror and then revulsion. My companion immediately stepped in to smooth things over. As we turned away from the door, I could see he was trying his best to hold back the laughter. I asked him what I had said. He explained that while I used the adjective Kowai, I should have said Kawai. Kawai means cute. Kowai means scary. So instead of saying what a cute baby, I said " Your baby is really scary!"