This drawing and commentary were from 5 years ago today. Ironic I choose to republish this drawing about a VERY cold day in 2014 on the warmest day of winter 2019 (so far)
Teenagers are Dumb, Adults are Dumber
As most of the US knows and feels, it’s been brutal cold all over the eastern 2/3rds of the country. We are lucky here in Oklahoma, the cold is not nearly as bad as north and east of us. Still, it’s cold enough (12 degrees this AM) that parents are fighting with their teenage kids about how to dress to go outdoors.
I went to Wal-Mart yesterday. In cold weather it’s fun to make a game of finding the most inappropriately dressed person. Yesterday, when it was all of 14 degrees with a strong wind that person was a teenage girl walking out of the store in a simple long sleeve t-shirt and shorts. Her shoes were Tom’s type slip-on canvas shoes. No socks. She was the winner UNTIL a second later I spotted her father walking behind her. He was in a t-shirt and shorts. It wasn’t hard to figure out where she got her common sense and attitude of preparedness. Did they make it home ok? Probably so. His poor decision for himself and his daughter (yes, he was responsible for how she dressed) probably did not end poorly. But would they have made it home ok if they had gotten into a wreck on the icy streets, going off into a culvert and disappearing from the road? Maybe not. In which case, that poor decision could have ended badly.
Another Sort of Poor Decision
Being underdressed in the cold is dumb, but there are much worse decisions people make. Decisions with HUGE life altering consequences. But even those don’t have to end poorly. For example, you have unprotected sex with someone and get pregnant, or get them pregnant. That was a poor decision. But that poor decision doesn’t mean the child’s life is doomed. That life (and your life) can be a great one. Your relationship with the father or mother can be good, even if you don’t stay together. You can arrange your lifestyle so the child is raised safe and happy. You can build a life for your family that is positive and good. It might take more work than it would have otherwise, but it can be done.
The Kid at the Bus Stop
If I see someone at the top of a cliff, about to go over, I am going to yell and scream and do whatever I can to stop them. But if they have already fallen off the cliff and are at the bottom, I am not going to yell and scream. I am not going to tell them they shouldn’t have been so close to the edge. I am going to help them up, tend to their wounds and help them recover. Then, and only then, we might have a discussion on how to avoid that cliff in the future.
If you have made poor decisions, resolve to not have them end poorly. If you are a witness to poor decisions others make, do what you can to help them have the end be rich, not poor.
_____________________
Drawing by Marty Coleman
Quote by my cool Son-in-Law and father of my granddaughter, Patrick Evans
I did this drawing and wrote the commentary 5 years ago today. Still one of my favorite quotes. I think the drawing is totally cool too.
Falling Apart
Have you ever had every expectation of what your life is going to be destroyed? I have, twice. It was my injury and burns from a boat explosion the first time and my divorce the second time. In the scheme of things they weren’t nearly as brutal as truly terrible events; a tsunami, a terrorist attack, genocide, maiming, killing, destruction of your physical world. Those are cataclysms that it’s hard to recover from.
I remember being in the hospital in September of 1973 and having someone say something about January, 74 coming up. I remember how impossible it was for me to imagine January. It wasn’t just far away in terms of time, it was psychologically far away. I didn’t believe it would ever come because every day was the same painful day, again and again. The pain was never going to leave and if the pain didn’t leave then time really wasn’t moving forward at all. January was just another word, like bandage or blood, it wasn’t a moment in the future.
In it’s own way, less physically painful than the burns, but emotionally much more devastating, my divorce destroyed a lot of what I was expecting from the future. I hadn’t verbally formulated much of what I expected to happen in the future while I was still married; my ideas were assumptions about how it would go. But once the divorce was in the works those ideas were obliterated. I wouldn’t have a 50 wedding anniversary for example. That was tough to take. I couldn’t allow myself to imagine a new relationship with a new family structure.
Falling Into Place
What happens next? Well, if you are the one whose life has been blown up, then what you can do is have an open and brave heart. That is not an easy thing to do, but it can be done. Not all at once, but over time, you can take a brave step into the future and see where it leads.
My experience of the explosion, recovery and my still existing scars ended up being one of the single most important events of my life, changing me into an artist, friend, husband and father I never would have been otherwise. Everything fell into place in large part because of that event.
My divorce, while unfortunate, led to me dating Linda, marrying her and inheriting a fourth daughter, Caitlin. Both have been blessings beyond what I could have imagined. Everything fell into place in large part because of that divorce.
Time
Of course, you can’t necessarily explain that this obliteration of life is actually an essential part of future happiness to someone who’s just gone through such a trauma; they really don’t want to hear it since it sounds like just so much patronizing crap. And it probably is patronizing crap at the time. But it’s also true. The future can be better than what you allow yourself to imagine.
This is a napkin drawing and commentary from 9 years ago today. Trump had only appeared on the political scene with some birther tirades at this point, and all the dark natured imbeciles who encouraged him were still seen as fringe whackos instead of main stream talking heads that they are now. So, while I wish I could say things have gotten better, they really haven’t.
This is dedicated to some knuckleheads I had the honor of conversing with first thing this morning. They happened to be of the conspiratorial type, sure that the US is in the grips of a secret communist cabal.
But the danger isn’t really about those people, the danger is with people of any stripes, left, right, up down, Christian, Muslim, atheist, etc. who aren’t paying attention to evidence, proof and history.
They instead are purposely bending the little bits they do know (not much) to match their anger, their prejudices and their self-serving agendas.
Whether it be UFO true believers, anti-Obama birthers, anti-Bush anarchists or any number of groups, the test is whether they are truly interested in finding truth, figuring out solutions (including compromises) or if they are interested in just building on their wobbly prejudices with more true believers.
Here are two more monsters in my series, Dracula and The Wolfman
My favorite of all the monsters from my youth was The Wolfman. He was hairy, scary and primal. I liked that The Wolfman was a normal guy until the full moon came out, then he became a super powerful animal-man. Who wouldn’t want to be that!? He was hip and cool, even if he did rip a couple people to shreds now and then.
Dracula was my least favorite because he was a pale, stuck-up wimp. Also, Dracula was stuck always being Dracula. Even when he changed, it was into something gross, like a bat. Who wants to be a bat? He also didn’t get to go out in the sun and had to sleep in a coffin. No thanks.
This drawing and commentary was posted 10 years ago but the drawing is from 17 years ago. Man, I’ve been drawing these a long time!
I love the simplicity and purity of this statement.
The Christian commandment that we do for others as we would like them to do for us does not include the caveat that we only have to do that if they return the favor. In other words, you can’t really know why ‘others’ are here, only yourself. So, pay attention to what you are called to do. That will be the best way to lean the arc of the universe towards good.
“We are here to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.” – W. H. Auden
