The Bike, A Bottle of Nail Polish Remover & A Secret Note

I've always liked the first page of M. Scott Peck's book, The Road Less Traveled. In fact, the book has been sitting on my desk for the past week because I pulled it off the shelf to re-read this page. Here's a sample of what it says:

"Life is difficult...Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters."

These words remind me of the power of acceptance - accepting life as it is instead of fighting against how we want it to be.

In the play, Lost In Yonkers, by Neil Simon, the main character, Bella, just wants her mom and nephew to sit down in the living room so that she can share some big news. Her mom won't sit in the right chair and her brother keeps getting up and looking out the window. Finally in great frustration Bella blurts out, "This is not how I had it pictured."

Sometimes life just isn't how we have it pictured. Okay, a lot of the time it's not the way we anticipated or "had it pictured." But sometimes, rather than accepting that life is difficult and moving on, we decide that a certain scene of our lives just has to go our way.

Lately, I've been observing what people do to get what they most want when life isn't going as they had planned. I have categorized my observations into 3 buckets: Ask for Forgiveness Later, Intimidation and Violence. These categories can best be illustrated by sharing 3 stories from the life of my good friend Jill Kocherhans.

Ask for Forgiveness Later: One evening when Jill was 11 years old, she was using an opened bottle of fingernail polish remover on the beautifully varnished oak coffee table that was displayed in the home of her parents. Before leaving on a date with his wife, Jill's dad said, "Sweetie, that fingernail polish remover is going to spill all over and ruin our table. Don't you think you should do your nails in a different place." To which Jill replied, "No it's not. I'll be super careful." Her father and mother left on a date and Jill continued removing that old coat of nail polish that was the same exact color as Donny Osmond's purple socks. After finishing the left hand ring finger, the stars and planets aligned against Jill and somehow that bottle of nail polish remover landed on the table in a horizontal position, removing the varnish down to the bare oak where it had spilled. The next morning, she saddled up to the confession booth with her father and asked for his forgiveness.

Intimidation: One day when Jill was in the fifth grade she was riding home from school on her purple (yes, same color as the socks) Schwinn one-speeder when she spotted JoLisa Farfernoggin. Oh how Jill hated JoLisa Farfernoggin and her annoying little pigtails. Jill's best friend, Loretta, started being friends with JoLisa. Each time Jill would ask if she could play with them, JoLisa always told her no. Something within Jill snapped that day on the bike and the force with which her legs were turning the pedals ignited. With increasing speed, Jill yelled out, "JoLisa Farfernoggin, you better move." JoLisa replied, "I'm not moving." Jill repeated her intimidating taunt and JoLisa remained stubborn in her position on the street. The bike drew closer and JoLisa became ever more determined to stand her ground. I will spare my younger readers the disturbing details and just make mention that Mrs. Farfernoggin sure spent a lot of time in the laundry room scrubbing those tire marks out of JoLisa's blue gingham dress.

Violence: When Jill was in the fourth grade sitting in a school assembly, she passed a secret note to her friend Becky Sue. To Jill's horror, Martha Mae intercepted the note and refused to give it back. After multiple attempts, Jill could not get Martha Mae to surrender the note. Jill knew that she couldn't accept that sometimes in life your secret note gets stolen. In a fury of desperation, Jill grabbed Martha Mae's hand and bit it as hard as she could. This cost Jill a great deal as she had some explaining to do out in the hall with her teacher, but it was worth it because she got what she wanted - the secret note.

I guess Burger King got it right years ago - sometimes you just have to have things your way. Another way of looking at the wisdom of M. Scott Peck is to accept that sometimes we just can't accept that life is difficult. I thank my friend Jill for teaching me this new and slightly-bent interpretation of acceptance.

Grandpa Dwayne's Top 10 Sayings

The other night I had a dream about my Grandpa Dwayne. I don’t know how to interpret the dream because all it consisted of was him calling me on my cell phone and asking if I would pick him up some hot mustard sauce. And then he said, “You better tack on some ham and cheese to go with it.” I then went shopping at a pharmacy to get the goods only to be told by the pharmacist that Aunt Deb had phoned and asked him to inform me that a bottle of hot mustard had been found in the cellar so I wondered if my grandpa still needed the ham and cheese and what if he didn’t go out to the cellar? Should I still get the hot mustard? And that was it.

These are meaningful issues when you’re asleep, less so when you’re awake, but I’ve been thinking about how language defines us even when it makes no sense. I hadn’t been thinking about my grandfather before my dream, but when I checked the calendar I realized his passing was about this same time, three years ago.

I thought about what he was saying in the dream, and then I thought about what he said when he was alive, the odd, and random expressions that were always rolling off of his tongue.

Prior to taking a shower he would announce, "Its time to go jump in the Smith & Moorehouse."

When he couldn't recall something he would say, “ I just go to the Snake River and that’s as far as I can go.”

The day we went for firewood and his truck muffler was ripped off by some dead branches, rather than being angry about it he said, "You see son, you've got to always plan for trouble."

When you would tell him goodbye he would reply, "Okay, I'll see you in the funny papers."

If you asked him where he was going he would say, "South of Peoa on a load of turnips.”

Anytime he was asked how long something would take, his standard response was, “Oh, about a-week-a-ten-days.”

While sitting on a lawn chair in his garage watching people drive by, he would say inquisitively, "Now …where do you think she's going? That's the third time she's driven by here today."

While playing the card game Pit and always getting beat, he would yell out, "Why do I always end up with the damn bear!"

When leaving the house he would say, "Take your time going, and hurry back."

And his favorite and only recited poem:


One bright day, in the middle of the night
Two dead men came out to fight
Back to back, they faced each other
Drew their swords and shot each other
A deaf policeman heard the noise
And came to kill the two dead boys
If you don’t believe my story’s true
Ask the blind man, he saw it too

I think many of these sayings came from my grandpa's dad, my great grandfather, and I catch myself now using them with my kids, the fourth generation of Wilde’s. And I wonder will they say any of these things to their kids years from now when they’re grown and married and have families of their own, maybe after I’m gone? Will I live in their dreams when my son says as his daughter leaves for her first date, “take your time going, and hurry back.”

Once Upon A Time...

Once upon a time in a far away land, there lived a lovely princess. She had jet-black hair, rosy-red lips and lily-white skin - thus the name, Snow White. She had a Wicked Stepmother (aka, WSM) who was intensely jealous of Snow White's beauty. The WSM called the woodsman to kill Snow White, but he warned Snow White to run - and run she did in her five and three-quarters pumps. She met up with 7 dwarfs who instantly became surrogate males in her life because she had no father - or at least he was never mentioned in the Disney version.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl name Cinderella, who was dear and fair and sweet and oh so very kind to not just people, but fowls and rodents. With not a trace of detail, Cinderella's mother was gone. Dead? We know not, but one thing we do know is that her father took on a new wife and she became known as the WSM. And then out of necessity to the story, her father died and Cinderella became a slave girl to this Witch-of-a-Stepmother and her two homely daughters.

Once upon a time in a kingdom not too distant (but further away than LaVerkin, Utah 84745), a King and Queen had a beautiful baby girl and named her, Aurora. Maleficent, an evil witch (but not the WSM in this tale), strolls onto the scene, makes a scene of herself for not having been invited to a feast thrown by the King to celebrate the birth of lovely Auroa, and casts some ridiculous spell on Aurora that she would prick her finger on a spinning wheel on her sixteenth birthday and die - and since spinning wheels were a common household item in the Kingdom - the likelihood of this happening was ginormous, leaving the King and Queen with no alternative than to have 3 fairies raise their daughter for the next sixteen years in a hidden cottage in the forest, not that Auroa couldn't be hidden just on her sixteenth birthday, but all caution of parental bonding and attachment issues (that came from the palace social workers), was thrown to the wind and 3 old fairy ladies raised the girl in secrecy assuming she would have no identity issues or wonder about her family of origin. All in all, the important part for this post: she grew up without parents.

Once upon a time in a far distant sea, there lived a mermaid princess known as Ariel. She was raised by her father, the King and nannied by a crab. Where is the Queen you ask? Missing, without a trace. Ursula is the Wicked Sea Witch (aka, WSW) who talks of having lived in the castle and we are left to wonder if she was once the Queen, married to King Triton and therefore, that would make her, - Oh! - Ariel's mother! But wondering is all we can do because it is essential that Ariel's mother's whereabouts remain a mystery in order to make it a TRUE and impressionable fairy tale.

Once upon a time, in the land of Farmington, UT 84025, there lived a little 3 year old girl who was certain she was a princess. For her recent birthday she was showered with a Snow White princess dress, plastic jewelery and four different pairs of five and three-quarters princess pumps. Around the castle she roamed, flitting and fluttering about, as princesses do. One bright sunny day, while her biological and involved father was at work, the princess went out on her back patio to play. Her biological mother, who, like the father, is playing an active part in the princess's life, heard the princess singing at the top of her lungs a pretty little tune while twirling around on the cement in her new princess attire. Her mother quietly opened the back door that lead to the patio to listen and she was struck by the lyrics that were being repeated by her daughter. And these were the words:

My mom is dead
My mom is dead
And my dad is dead too
I am a princess and my mom is dead

Oh, my mom is dead
My mom is dead
And my dad is dead too
I am a princess and my mom is dead

Oh, the the influence of Disney fairy tales on the life of a modern day princess. What is to become of her? Better yet, what is to become of her parents? It appears that she will only be a TRUE princess if, "[Her] mom is dead; [Her] mom is dead; And [her] dad is dead too."

Go figure.

In the "Back-then-Days"

While driving one of my sons home from a friend's house, he started telling me about the year-end testing he is anticipating in school. He was relieved that a big change had been made in how he would take the tests this year compared to prior years. As he told me about the change, I had a feeling of amazement for the many technological advances I've seen in my day. But this advancement has to be one of the biggest and quite frankly, I'm surprised it has taken this long to evolve. The change you ask? --NO MORE BUBBLE SHEETS.

That's right. No more booklets that must be returned to the teacher in pristine condition and no more #2 pencils. Amazing! Instead the test will be administered on the computer.

My son will forever have this technological emergence in his mind and will tell his children and grandchildren, "I remember when our wrists had to be soaked in ice every night during test week because they ached so bad from filling in all those bubbles. And I remember one year I sprained my wrist and had to sit out the entire baseball season because of that old crank on the #2 pencil sharpener."

A few days later I had another one of those, "in the back then days" (as my 6 year old son refers to the old fashioned days of my childhood) when my mom delivered an old rotary baby-blue telephone that used to sit on my grandma's nightstand in her bedroom while I was growing up. I had inquired about the phone and through the generosity of my grandma, the phone is now mine. I placed the phone on my bed away from the sticky hands of my 3 year-old daughter and her bottomless toy box until I could decide where I wanted to put it.

A little while later, I walked into the bedroom and found my 9 year-old son holding the receiver in his left hand while trying to figure out how the rotary dial was used to place a call. I was certain he knew it was a telephone but that circular dial thingy was completely baffling to him. The twisted springy cord was also a novelty - probably because he's not used to seeing the receiver tethered to the base of a phone. He looked at me and said with a big puzzled grin, "Dad, this phone is cool. But I can't figure out how you would call somebody on it. Does this circle with holes in it have to be turned to the end every time you dial a number?" The phone does not have caller ID, touch tone keys or cordless features. It was clear to me from the expression on his face that he had positively stumbled upon a machine, "from the back-then-days."

I was around ten when my grandparents got their first microwave. We quickly discovered how that little rectangular appliance could plump a hot dog and blow-up an egg in a matter of minutes. A year or two later, we got our first VCR - man was that thing ginormous! We had to leave the town of Kamas, Utah 84036 and venture to Park City, 84060 to find the nearest video rental store. All the movies they had were printed in 2 columns on a single sheet of paper. Talk about being deprived.

Personal computers eventually became a necessary household appliance. The first year of our marriage we pounded the keys of an electronic Brother typewriter. My wife woke me around 2:00 a.m. one night to inform me that the typewriter had run out of ribbon ink. We got in the car and drove to the nearest 24 hour store to buy a new ink cartridge so that she could finish the paper that was due that afternoon. We eventually saved our money (I wanted to finance, but the wisdom of my wife prevailed - good husband) and purchased our first PC while we were in college. Today PCs govern, operate and process the majority of what we experience in a day. My children know no other way of life.

Gone are the days of boiling hotdogs, buying penny candy from Hoyt's store in downtown Kamas, Utah 84036, "dialing" your best friend, and gone are the days of the ol' bubble sheets. Another item to add to the list of the "back-then-days."


Some of my email subscribers did not receive my column last week. If you missed it, scroll down and you'll find, Lessons from the Raingutter Regatta.

Lessons from the Raingutter Regatta

It's Raingutter Regatta building time at our home this week. This is an event that Cub Scouts participate in similar to a Pinewood Derby. The difference is that you are racing a boat you and your son assemble and race in a raingutter filled with water.

On Sunday we had the parts laid out on the table: boat, mast, keel and rudder. My 3 year-old daughter took great interest in the keel probably because it is a shiny silver triangle that looks like a flat house that's been cut in half, with a sharp pointy tip that can be used to do some damage.

While my son and I were reading the instructions (yes, I do read the instructions having learned the hard way 3 years ago), I happened to look up and saw my 3 year-old with keel in hand, using all her might to get the pointy tip to stick into our solid maple kitchen table.

Now a little disclaimer so that you don't call the Division of Child and Family Services: my daughter possess super-charged emotions that are easily triggered. With some of our kids we have to use a sledge hammer to get a point across, but this little one only requires a soft rubber mallet. When I saw her trying to insert the keel into the table like she was putting a nose on Mr. Potato Head, I confess - I reacted, rather than responded. I said something like, "Oh! We don't put that into the table. It will make a hole that we will never be able to fix." Well, my knee-jerk reaction, combined with my tone and choice of words, injured her little heart and the tears came pouring.

I quickly went to her, took her in my arms, told her I was sorry and tried to explain in a softer way why I was telling her (failing to ask her) why she couldn't gouge the table with her new-found woodworking instrument. After a few minutes I felt I had consoled her, glued her back together and the incident was resolved.

A couple of hours later, she and I were sitting in our van, waiting for the crowd to take their places for a little jaunt to grandma and grandpa's and the following conversation took place:

Thoughtful-Daughter: "Daddy, do you love me?"

About-to-be-Blindsided-Father: "Of course I love you sweetie."

Injured-Daughter: "But you yelled at me today."

Clueless Dad: "I'm sorry I yelled at you. Sometimes daddy get's a little angry, but that doesn't mean I don't love you. I will always love you sweetie, even if I get mad sometimes."

After sitting in silence for about 2 minutes she responds:

Going-In-For-the-Kill-Daughter: "Yelling is not kisses, daddy."

Raingutter Regatta Kit: $3.99
Daughter Teaching Father a Lesson About Relationships: Priceless

Flash Mobbing

Flash Mobbing. Have you heard of it? Better yet, have you seen it?

I could hook you up with a Wikipedia link that would define Flash Mobbing, but you just gotta experience it for yourself. It's not like Flash Dancing, so banish that preconception from your mind. And it has nothing to do with gangstas. Give thought to a few questions as you watch it:


1.) What if life really could be this spontaneous? (maybe it can)

2.) What buried passions are triggered as you watch these people?

3.) Do the things we value most in life really take this much practice?

4.) Does it matter that you never really liked Julie Andrews?


Here goes...



Flash Mobbing was started by a guy named "Bill" as an email con to get people to spontaneously show up at a designated place and “do basically nothing at all.” The first Flash Mob was in New York City and was halted by police. But after the second attempt was a success, the craze took off across America, eventually spreading internationally, with this recent occurrence at the Antwerp Central Station in Belgium .

In the midst of the poor economy, ongoing war and flu threats, unacquainted people are getting together, working on a common goal, giving their personal time, instantaneously showing up at a designed location and -ta-da- Flash Mobbing!

Not a bad idea, eh?

You Can Dress Your Kids Up, But You Can’t Control What They Say

Recently our eleven year old son was invited to be part of a photo shoot for an upcoming front cover of The Friend magazine published by the LDS church. He was not selected for any special reason other than the photographer remembered him among a number of kids at a pre-photo shoot as, “the boy with the cut lip.” Don’t try telling him flesh wounds to the face don’t bring paybacks.

On the front cover, our son and four other children will be shown with President Thomas S. Monson, President and Prophet of the LDS church. For a Mormon, meeting the Prophet is akin to meeting the Pope if you are Catholic. Oh sure, the Prophet can be seen in the monthly church magazines and twice a year on television during the broadcast of General Conference, but to actually meet him is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Our son was excited to have this opportunity, as was my wife who was “required” to go with him to the shoot.

My wife dug his tie out of the bottom of his closet, pressed his white shirt, matted down his flapping cowlicks and accompanied him to the Beehive House in downtown Salt Lake City. While the photographer prepped the photo room, the children waited patiently. After about an hour, everything was in order and President Monson arrived. As you can imagine, his presence filled the room and the children stood in disbelief that they were actually in the same room with him.

Our son is observant, highly attuned to his surroundings, with an extremely witty sense of humor. He is calm, polite and knows how to adjust his behavior appropriately to any given situation. I had no worries about him knowing how to conduct and handle himself around the Prophet. In fact, the thought to be concerned never crossed my mind.

Before I continue, let me explain where and by whom I learned the truth of what happened at that photo shoot. When my son came home from getting his mug shot, I asked him to tell me all about his experience, of which he gave me an eleven year old response of, “It was cool.” My wife also told me about their trip downtown and what a special experience it was for her. But it wasn’t until two days later, that I found myself sitting on the baseball bleachers in Farmington, Utah 84025 watching my son play his first game of the season. I was sitting next to a good friend who leaned over to me and said, “Hey, I heard what your son said when he and my daughter met the prophet the other day.” He could tell I had no idea what he was talking about and gloated while excitedly relayed the following to me.

After the photos were taken, President Monson invited the moms to join their children. As the moms were moving into the room, he said to the kids, “Moms are so special and I’ll bet you all have great dads.” Now most of the kids were likely a little overcome with the experience and reserved in their response. But not my son. In response to the question about having a great dad, my son took the occasion to blurt out, “Yeah, most of the time.” He wasn’t going to put-on-the-dog for the prophet and shy away from being himself. The occasion presented itself and he took the opportunity to just tell it like it is. I am a good dad, most of the time.

Since learning of my son’s comment, I have played up a little drama in jest and given him a hard time about dissing his dad in front of the prophet. But truth is, I like that he can be himself and not feel like he has to put on a false self for others. Some may feel like children should put on their best selves at all times, to be respectful and appropriate. But being someone other than your true self isn’t respectful or appropriate. It’s actually a little on the dishonest or disingenuous side.

This son of mine is a keeper and, like my other children, continues to teach me some very important lessons about life. When others are real with me, it’s actually a gift and an invitation to relax and just be who I am at the moment. I’m going to try and have more of those moments with myself and others.
But as a parent it is my right, according to The Parent Manual, to get the last word. So, to my son I say… thanks!