What If You Get a Second Chance?

Do second chances exist? If something doesn’t turn out the way we want it to, do we ever really get another chance at it?Even if we get to do the same thing again, it’s not really a second chance. Something is different the second time around. Circumstances have changed, time has moved on, life has beaten us down or lifted us up. It’s not a second chance at the same thing. It’s a first chance at a similar thing.When I read the challenge for tonight’s Blogapalooz-hour—Write about something in your life you'd like a second chance at—I knew immediately what I would write about.But then I thought better of it. I just don’t know you that well. Nothing personal. I’m just not going to write what I planned to write and then wake up tomorrow and wish that I had a second chance to not write it. Ain’t no second chances when it comes to writing something, and then publishing it for the whole world to see.Then what the hell do I want a second chance at?I grounded into a double play to end an all-star game when I was fifteen-years-old. I’d like a second chance at that at-bat.I ordered the Pure Moods cd after seeing a late-night infomercial and got roped into buying a cd called Yeha Noha at the same time. I’d like a second chance at that phone call.I burned entirely too much food before I finally realized that high heat isn’t the correct setting for every type of cooking. I’d like a second chance at some of those meals. There’s the equivalent of an entire garbage dump filled with just the scorched remnants of my culinary blunders.And really, wouldn’t we all like a second chance at childhood? Not that we didn’t get it right the first time, but wouldn’t it be great to be so carefree, but this time with the wisdom to enjoy it? I’d love to wear a bib again without people giving me strange looks.But my second chance wish is probably the same one many other people have. I’d like a second chance at college.Actually, it’s not college that I want. The idea of sitting in a classroom and listening to some professor lecture, or other students ask questions or engage in discussion isn’t at all appealing.After high school most kids are expected to go to college. And we ask them to choose a major and learn something to prepare them for a career at which they’ll spend the next forty-five years or so.Why? Why is it reasonable to expect a kid that age to know what they want to do for the rest of their lives? Are the things that interest an eighteen-year-old kid going to be the same things that interest that same person when he’s thirty, or forty-five, or sixty?Probably not. Yet we tell our kids that they need to study hard those four years and figure out what they want to do with the rest of their lives.But here’s one place where second chances sort of do exist.I did one year at Valparaiso University. I don’t even remember what my major was. I think I thought it was sports management, but then at the end of the year I discovered that sports management was in the college of Arts and Sciences and I’d registered in the college of Business, so I wasn’t even in the right school.Not that it mattered. I ditched class to stay in my dorm and memorize the lyrics of songs. I did so poorly on my calculus final that I didn’t even submit the test. I walked out of the room, took the test with me, and it’s still stored away in a box of my stuff somewhere.Then I went to Indiana University Northwest and majored in business. And English. And communications. And then finally got a degree in history.I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve done pretty well since. I’ve got a good job. I get to use my brain. I don’t hate my job. I get paid well.So then what is it that I want a second chance at?I’m more sure now of what I want to do professionally than I ever have been. This is part of it. And I’m working in other ways to achieve it. I’ve wanted it for fifteen years, but I never saw a way to make it work. I see a path to get there now. I have a plan to make it work.I don’t know how anyone figures out what they want to do for the rest of their lives when they’re eighteen years old. It makes no sense to me. But now, twenty years later, I’m giving myself a second chance to figure out what I want to do.We don’t always get second chances. But we always have to be ready for them when they arrive.And I’m ready.Let me send you more Dry it in the Water posts!

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: My Daughter Graduated High School?PREVIOUS POST: Observations from Back to School Night

Observations from Back to School Night

After allowing the dust to settle for a couple of days after the first day of school, it’s time for the annual Back to School nights, where parents get the opportunity to cram themselves into chairs and behind desks designed for people half their size, and see the classrooms where their children now spend most of their their waking hours, and meet the complete strangers in whose care we leave our children to be imparted with wisdom. Or discipline. Or both. Or neither.For the teachers, it’s a rare opportunity to speak to a group of their peers, instead of their children’s peers. I can’t imagine the disappointment the teachers feel when they still have to deal with tardiness, lack of attention, and dumb questions.As much as Back to School disappoints me, I do like Back to School night. It’s nice to see what my children experience during the day, and I have fun trying to imagine them sitting in their desk, learning, reading, paying attention, and hopefully not asking dumb questions.This year I have kids in sixth grade, fourth grade and kindergarten, so I went to Back to School night at the elementary school and the middle school. And in the three hours I spent in school over the past two nights, I observed a few interesting things.Teachers hate standardized tests. Or at least almost all the teachers my kids have hate standardized tests. Most of them hinted around the issue, and dealt with it as a “We don’t like it, but we have to do it” issue. Only one teacher came right out and said she didn’t like standardized tests and then listed the reasons why.It occurred to me that her monologue against standardized tests would have scored very well on a standardized test. She chose an issue, declared a point-of-view, and then listed reasons why she was right.Luckily, she only talked about hating standardized tests for a minute or two. The only thing worse than standardized tests is listening to people complain about standardized tests. I once listened to the same person harangue against standardized tests three times over a two-week period. I wanted to take my number two pencil and puncture my ear drums.Projects suck. Teachers like them for some reason, but that’s only because they don’t remember what it was like to be a student. Sixth grade teachers especially seem to like projects and they act like they’re doing the kids a big favor by assigning them. Project is code for busy work that requires ten hours to teach a lesson that could be comprehended in ten minutes.One teacher said all projects would be completed in class instead of at home. And then she acknowledged the Great Secret: parents complete most projects assigned at home. She knows what’s up.Leave the projects for art class.Teachers are excited to have my children in their class this year. I heard this numerous times, and not just about my children. All the children. Just once I’d like a teacher to admit, “I saw that little asshole’s name on my class list and I asked to be transferred to another school.”I propose we have an End of School night in May. It won’t take place in school, it’ll take place at a bar. All the teachers will drink, and parents will find out the truth. Let’s see how gung ho those teachers are after nine months of Little Johnny running his mouth all day, refusing to turn in homework, and sticking his gum under the desk.I’m getting old. I walked into my sixth grader’s first class and wondered what the high school student was doing in there with other parents. And then the dude goes to the front of the class and introduces himself. He’s the teacher. He graduated college three months ago.My son has seven teachers. Four of them were obviously younger than me, two of them were around my age, but probably a couple of years younger, and only was older. Sometimes I think, “I’m only 38.” And sometimes I think, “Shit, I’m 38.” Back to School night was a “Shit, I’m 38” sort of night.Kindergarteners are the smartest people in any of the schools. If you haven’t been in a kindergarten classroom recently, you don’t understand. You’ve forgotten how fantastic it is. Everything is words and colors and numbers and crayons and scissors and glue and Kleenex and awesomeness.And those little kids are away from home all day long, maybe for the first time ever, and they’ve got years and years of school ahead of them, and if we’ve done our parenting jobs well they haven’t yet acquired any of the bullshit that makes adults so horrific. It’s sublime.So now it’s time to get down to brass tacks. Our kids and their teachers will roll their sleeves up and do the work. And if we’re smart, we’ll join in and help.Because not helping is the best way to ensure that your kid is going to be that little asshole. And that kids’ parents won’t be invited to End of School night.This is your final warning.Let me send you more Dry it in the Water posts!

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: My Daughter Graduated High School?PREVIOUS POST: Sometimes The Hard Work is Doing Nothing

Sometimes The Hard Work is Doing Nothing

I’ve written before about John Henry, the American folk hero known for his relentless hard work and persistence. He hammered steel into rock to make holes for explosives that would then explode the rock. He did this hard work for years, and eventually raced a steam-powered hammer. After winning the race against the hammer, John Henry died from stress and exhaustion, his hammer still in his hand.Very few of us can honestly claim to ever work as physically hard as John Henry worked. None of us can honestly claim to have worked so hard for so long.I’m writing this blog post for the morning Blogapalooz-Hour exercise in which ChicagoNow bloggers are given a topic and challenged to produce a post in one hour. This month’s topic is “Write about a time you worked very hard in your life at something.”I thought about this for half an hour. Usually when we’re given these topics I get the topic, make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and come up with an idea by the time I finish the last bite of crust. But PB&J isn’t available to me today, so I went to a vending machine and bought some peanut M&M’s.When it comes to inspiring my brain into action, peanut M&M’s are no peanut butter and jelly.I’ve worked hard at things, both for short periods of time and for long periods of time. Physically, mentally and emotionally. There have been times when I’ve felt completely exhausted for literally months at a time. I stand all day at work, by choice. There have been times when I’ve been so exhausted that standing seems impossible, so I have to sit.Given more than an hour, perhaps I could have organized my thoughts and words effectively enough to create a post about my hard work that you would have wanted to read.I could have written about the time I spent a day moving tons of rock while helping to build our house. I could have written about times I stayed up most of the night to finish a homework assignment in college. I could have written about days at work that are so busy that the day is over before it begins.I could have written about the hard work of being a good parent. People devote entire blogs, not just blog posts, to that topic.I could have written about how relationships can be hard work, even when they shouldn’t be, or when we don’t want them to be.I could have written about how I’ve worked hard — intermittently, I admit — to improve my poor eating habits, and control my weight. Look to the left to see the current state of that battle.But as I tried to choose a topic that I could expand into an entire post, it occurred to me that sometimes the hardest work seems like inaction. It’s seems like doing nothing at all.Thirty-five minutes passed before I wrote the first word of this post. Twenty more minutes have passed, and now I’m three minutes away from deadline. I won’t meet the deadline. Luckily, nothing happens except feeling a small amount of shame.Writing this has been the easy part. It’s what happens before writing that’s the hard part. When my fingers are moving the thoughts are already there. It’s easy to see the results of that work. Unseen are the moments before when it would have appeared to an outsider that I was standing around and doing nothing.It might be easy to assume that inaction is the hard work only when doing non-physical activity, but I don’t think that’s necessarily true.John Henry conditioned his body to pound at that rock all day, and he worked hard at it, but the human body is an amazing thing. The more we challenge it, the better it will respond. It will ache, it will be sore, but it will heal itself relatively quickly, and it will be stronger after that. And the next time John Henry pounded that rock, it would have been a little easier than the day before.If John Henry were real, I bet he’d say that the hard work came at the end of the day, after he’d pounded rock for countless hours, and then he went home and realized that he had to do the same thing tomorrow.So now this post is done. I’ll publish it, you’ll read it. And now the hard work begins: thinking about the next post.Let me send you more Dry it in the Water posts!

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Sometimes Just Being Summer is Good EnoughPREVIOUS POST: The First Day of School is Always Waiting

The First Day of School is Always Waiting

School started today, which means the day has been filled with awkward familiarity, if that makes sense. After four kids and more than a dozen years of first days, I know what to expect, but it always feels new.It amazes me how quickly we get used to summer. Even though I don’t get a summer vacation any more, I still identify with the beginning and end of my kids’ summer vacation. They’re in school now so I have to wake up earlier so I can be ready before I wake them up. And now I stay up later than them, which didn’t always happen during the eighty-one days of summer.During summer it’s easy for us to believe things won’t change. My kids won’t see sunlight before ten o’clock. They’ll forget what day of the week it is. They’ll always wear shorts and flip flops. I won’t have to pack their lunch.But then today comes, and everything we were used to just a few months ago seems new.I woke my kids up this morning and it seemed cruel for them to be awake so early. They hauled a plethora of pencils and glue sticks and folders in their backpacks. I wondered how they’d manage to only eat once in the next seven hours. Despite sitting in front of video games for hours at a time over the summer, making them sit in a classroom for hours at a time seemed confining.It won’t take long before all of this seems normal again, but today everything seemed out of place.Today was my daughter’s first day of kindergarten. She wore a dress with a Skittles pattern and puppy dog earrings, and her mom put her hair in a fancy ponytail/braid combination, and I packed a jelly sandwich for her lunch. We walked her to her class and helped her get settled. She sat at her desk, and we stood there and watched as she traced letters on a worksheet and pointed out that she shouldn’t have to trace the dot on the letter I because anyone can make a dot.And after a few minutes we told her we loved her and we left. She stayed. By herself. Without us. And she didn’t cry. (Did we?)I spent the day at home, thinking about her. Was she doing okay? Was she making new friends? Did the day seem long? Did she have time to eat all of her lunch? Could she get the Olaf juice bottle open? Would she be exhausted when she got home?Eventually it was time to pick her up. We waited outside the school, and watched as other kindergarteners were dismissed, and then she appeared in front of the window, her bright Skittles dress only outshone by her bright smile. She smiled and waved at her mom, and then saw me and smiled and waved at me.She had a good day.She’ll go back tomorrow. And she’ll go back for 2,338 more days of school before she graduates high school. Most of those days will be rather routine. She’ll have more first days, and I’ll again think it’s cruel to make those poor kids sit inside and work for seven hours.But there will also be more last days of school. And we’ll see the possibilities and adventures of summer spread out before us, and imagine that it will last forever. Just like her siblings, she’ll have music programs, and awards days, and holiday parties, and field trips. We’ll let her take a ditch day every now and then, and she’ll pretend to be sick occasionally.And in six years, she’ll start sixth grade, just like her oldest brother did today. On that day, I’ll look back on this day, and wonder how time passed so quickly. Her oldest brother will begin his senior year in high school on that day, and her other older brother will begin tenth grade.The day will seem new and awkward. The return of responsibility will seem unfair. But soon, we’ll get used to it, just like we do every year.It’s the first day of school. No matter how fun the summer, that first day is always there. Waiting. Full of promise brighter than my daughter’s Skittles dress.But not as bright as her smile.Nothing is that bright.Let me send you more Dry it in the Water posts!

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Sometimes Just Being Summer is Good EnoughPREVIOUS POST: Watching Jaws With my Kids

Watching Jaws With my Kids

We’ve got a couple of months of summer under our belts, which means the Baker tribe has had more than our fair share of days at the beach. Those warm, sandy, sun-soaked days at the beach, and days in the little beach town we visit in particular, remind me of Amity Island, that quaint little town almost done in by a hungry shark in 1975.Of course I’m talking about Jaws. It’s difficult to think of any film that screams “Summer!” to me more than Steven Spielberg’s first big hit. I’m sure I saw it when I was younger, but the first time I remember watching it was about thirteen years ago. Since then I’ve watched it three or four more times, and enjoyed it each time.Earlier this summer, during one of our first trips to the lake, I pretended to be a shark attacking my kids. We played, and splashed, and screamed, and then it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen Jaws in a few years, and my three youngest kids might not even remember seeing it. So a viewing of Jaws became part of the must-do list for the summer.Some of you might be thinking, “Hey, that’s not a kids movie. They shouldn’t be watching that.” And yes, Dear Reader, you’re right. It’s not a kids movie. But it’s rated PG, which is a lighter rating than the PG-13 Jurassic Park, which all of my kids saw two or three years ago and have absolutely loved ever since.Mrs. Doubtfire, Look Who’s Talking, and School of Rock are all rated PG-13 as well, and I bet you wouldn’t throw a fit about kids watching those movies.So pipe down.I know what my kids can handle. They’re eleven, ten and five, and, somewhat by design, we haven’t limited their viewing to reruns of Sesame Street and Leave it to Beaver. I was rather confident that all three kids—plus my oldest daughter, who first watched this movie with me when she was six—could handle it. The artistry, the thrill, the suspense of the film is more important than the slight unease they might have experienced.Of all the things in the film, my younger son was most appalled by the chief of police throwing a cigarette into the water while riding on a ferry boat. He could believe and understand killer sharks bigger than a boat, and limbs being ripped from attack victims, but the idea that people in the seventies didn’t care about littering was just too much for him!One scene in the film shows a man’s leg sinking to the bottom of the ocean after an attack, and I instinctively covered my five-year-old daughter’s eyes. She pushed my hand away, laughed, and said, “I already saw it, dad.”I forgot about the scene where Richard Dreyfuss’s character is inspecting the hull of a sinking boat, and a man’s corpse suddenly appears. We all jumped in our seats, and the image was off the screen before our brains could even process it. My daughter said, “That scared me!” and wanted to know why the shark ate the boat and not the man.And in the end, when the chief has his big moment with the shark (I won’t spoil it, just in case you’ve never seen it, but really, you need to see it ASAP), we all cheered and marveled at the impressiveness of the finale. After two hours of build-up, and John Williams’s haunting score, and wondering how the beast would be defeated, we’re treated to an outrageously pleasing conclusion.As we walked upstairs after the movie and my sons raved about it, but my daughter didn’t say anything, I wondered if maybe she was too scared to talk about it. When I tucked her in I asked if she was scared, and she laughed and said, “No.” She had no nightmares, and when I asked her about the movie today, she said she wanted to watch it a million more times.I’m glad they enjoyed the movie, and I hope, like their older sister, they’ll go back to it many times in years to come, and always remember the first time they saw it, in the basement, with me, near the end of a summer in which they spent a lot of time in the water.But unlike the beachgoers in the movie, who remained on the sand for fear of the shark, they’ll know they can go into the water, where the only shark is a dad who’s not as scary as he thinks he is.Let me send you more Dry it in the Water posts!

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: My Summer of Ice Cream ConesPREVIOUS POST: Words About My Son on His Tenth Birthday

Words About My Son on His Tenth Birthday

We celebrated my youngest son’s tenth birthday today. And not to sound like an old guy, but I can’t believe how quickly ten years has passed. He’s transformed from this big, long baby into a tall, tough, yet sensitive boy, and the changes have been so incremental, so infinitesimal when observed on a day-to-day basis, that it’s hard to understand how we even got here.As I was trying to think about what to write for last night’s blog post, my older son asked what I planned to write about. I told him I didn’t know, that I was still thinking about it. And my younger son, the chap whose birthday is today, half-jokingly suggested that I write about him. I knew right away that I would do just that, but how do I sum up everything that is my son in 750 words?I have no idea.What do I write about?Do I mention his kindness? The way that he lights up when he’s around babies. The incomprehensibly sweet moment his mother captured in a photo, of his four-year-old excitement at holding his newborn sister for the first time. The way he’s universally liked by his classmates and teammates.Do I mention his craziness? The way he’ll do anything for a laugh. The time he walked up to a total stranger at Brookfield Zoo and said, “How are you? I haven’t seen you in a long time,” to which the stranger had no response, which didn’t bother him at all because he did it to make his brother and sister laugh, which they did. Or the silly faces and bizarre sounds he makes at random times, just to be funny.Do I mention his smarts? The way he’ll bring up something we talked about weeks before, after thinking about it silently and coming to a sudden revelation, which often leaves us confused because we weren’t part of his thought process and have no idea why he’s talking about something we’ve likely forgotten about. Or the ease with which he mastered his math facts.I could write about all of these things and a million others. The pride he felt at achieving perfect attendance at school this year. His uncanny ability to sing along with seemingly any song that comes on the radio. His determination for mastering various athletic feats. The way he gets dressed every day as soon as he wakes up. The unbelievably tight curl of his hair, and the entirely unique texture associated with it.I could mention his toughness. Like the vivid memory of him climbing the largest rocks farthest from the shore in the tide pools in Corona del Mar, California when he was six, and the trickle of blood on his shin when he was done. Or the way he bounced back from a broken leg (from going down a slide) and a broken collarbone (from falling off a chair), by the time he was two-and-a-half. Or the way he stood on second base this past April, and watched as a hard hit line drive nailed him in the arm, never bothering to move.All four of my kids have blue eyes, but there are times—if the light is just right, or if the surrounding colors are just right—in which his eyes are so blue it seems like he invented the color.I could go on and on.But in thinking about him, I’ve concluded that really all you need to know, and really all I need to say, is that my life is better because he exists. I’m don’t mean it the way people think their lives are better because Bill Gates, or Mick Jagger or the Cubs exist. He has helped make my life what it is, and make me who I am. My son makes every second of my life better than it otherwise would be.What more could we ask of anyone?Someday—and it’s a day that I don’t want to think about—he’s going to leave. He’ll go off to college, or he’ll go to New York or LA to be an actor, or to some small city to play minor league baseball, or somewhere else to begin an adventure we can’t even imagine yet. And when he leaves I won’t see him everyday. I won’t hug him everyday. I won’t see those eyes and that smile, and I won’t hear his voice.But there are thousands of days until that happens. In the meantime, I’ll relish every moment as he has new experiences, learns new things, meets new people, sees new places, and navigates through life’s disappointments, thrills, challenges and exhilaration.And I’ll never ever forget just how lucky I am to call him my son.Let me send you more Dry it in the Water posts!

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: The 939 Saturdays of ChildhoodPREVIOUS POST: My Dumb Drinking Glass Habit

My Dumb Drinking Glass Habit

I’ve written about food on this blog before. I like to eat (don’t trust anyone who doesn’t like to eat) so it only makes sense that in a couple hundred posts, a few of them would relate to food.I’ve written about cereal, which is one of the most processed items in a grocery store, and goes against a general eating rule of mine: eat whole, unadulterated food, not food products. If food comes in a package, chances are it’s garbage. There are some healthy exceptions to this rule, which I don’t have to defend. But my obsession with cereal—sugary cereals, “healthy” cereals, all cereals—is basically an indefensible violation of my general eating rule, so I won’t even try to defend it.I’ve written about peanut butter and jelly. In particular the right way to make a PB&J sandwich. That post led to a number of interesting conversations. I enjoyed debating the “right” way with some very intelligent people, and also powered through discussions with a couple of idiots.And tonight’s challenge for Blogapalooz-hour, in which we’re given a topic and then one hour to produce a post, challenged us to write about a food or eating habit of ours that others might find quirky or weird. Peanut butter and jelly was the first thing that came to mind.I eat PB&J at all times of the day. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, late night snack. Every time I do a Blogapalooz-hour I read the topic, go to the kitchen and make a PB&J, and eat my sandwich while thinking of a direction to go with my writing.I’ve had four PB&J sandwiches today.Just over a year ago I spent a couple days by myself in a fairly isolated place and I ate nothing but PB&J for more than 48 hours. I lost count around fourteen sandwiches.So I could have written about PB&J.I could also have written about Eat Whatever You Want Day, which has become a Baker Family tradition, and will take place in a couple of weeks. Or about my aversion to seafood. I’ll just never understand how anyone thinks that stuff smells good. Or about my years-long obsession with A1 steak sauce. Or my current quest for the perfect egg preparation technique.I can say a lot about food. Chances are this isn’t going to be my last culinary-inspired blog post.But none of those topics are particularly quirky or weird, and I like to meet the challenge, so I’ve tossed those ideas aside.Instead, I’ll write about rings. Specifically, the ring of wetness left on a table by a drinking glass or bottle.If I’m sitting in a restaurant, or really at any place for a long period of time, and I’m drinking something that leaves a ring of wetness on the table, then the entire time I’m sitting there, I will make sure to put the glass right back on top of the ring. I’ve done this for as long as I can remember.I went to a restaurant yesterday with my family, and the waitress put a napkin in front of each person at the table, and then placed the glass on the table right next to the napkin. Not on top of it, right next to it. This struck me as odd. I assumed the napkin was there to soak up the wetness of the glass, so I didn’t understand why she placed it next to it. I still don’t. I wanted to ask her why she did it, but thought I might sound crazy.But actually, the placement of the glass is insignificant to me. Once she placed it on the table, I wasn’t going to move it to the napkin. The ring was created on the table, so throughout the meal—and the many refills of Diet Coke that followed—I picked up the drink and then put it right back down on the ring. Not by chance. By design.I do this all the time, at every restaurant, at every table, whenever a ring appears. I have no idea why.I suspect it has something to do with the way my brain works. I’m not the neatest person in the world, but I have to fold towels and blankets neatly, corner to corner. When I put dishes away I have to make sure small bowls and cups fit inside larger ones, and on more than one occasion I’ve arranged our colorful dinner plates so they’re in ROYGBIV order in the cabinet. I’ve also written about my obsession with counting and alphabetizing letters in words.I suspect this is all some sort of low-grade obsessive-compulsive disorder. It has no negative effect on my life so I haven’t thought about it too much, but if I put my glass down on the table and didn’t take the extra second to make sure it was right on top of the ring, it would drive me crazy. And I don’t understand why anyone would just keep putting the glass down in different places, creating numerous rings. Why?But maybe the bigger question should be, why the hell do I care?Let me know if you have the answer. Otherwise, I’m just going to make a PB&J and ponder it.Let me send you more Dry it in the Water posts!

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: It's More than just Picking your Own FoodPREVIOUS POST: Melania Trump Plagiarism Fits With the Rest of Donald Trump's Lies

Melania Trump Plagiarism Fits With the Rest of Donald Trump's Lies

So parts of wanna-be First Lady Melania Trump’s speech at this year’s Republican National Convention appear to be lifted directly from actual First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.After my initial reaction (What the Fuck?!)—which I’m sure is the same reaction as almost everyone else in the world—it occurred to me that we shouldn’t really be surprised. It’s just another in a long line of examples in which Donald Trump has attempted to fool us. Up is down. Left is right. Old is new.Donald Trump, and his entire campaign, from top to bottom, is full of shit. Stupid, idiotic, can-you-believe-people-even-listen-to-this shit.If I think about it too much I actually feel bad for Melania Trump in the same way that I feel bad for the wife of any presidential candidate who is expected to address a national party convention. What in Melania Trump’s background suggests that she would feel comfortable giving a speech in such a forum? She’s not running for any office. She’s just married to a guy who (supposedly) wants to be president. Does anyone vote or not vote for a candidate based on their spouse?But I find it hard to sympathize with anyone whose judgment is so lacking that they decide to marry Donald Trump. And she claimed to have written the speech “with as little help as possible.” Come on. Dear Reader, if you believe that then I’ve got a really long wall on the border I want to sell you. (Or make you pay for.)*Side note: Melania, if you’re reading this, those marks that look like eyelashes in the second sentence above are called quotation marks. I used them to show that those words aren’t my own. They’re yours. (I think.)However, I’m willing to cut her a little slack because it’s difficult to think of a worse role in the world than that of Donald Trump’s wife. Like most presidential wives, she didn’t ask for this, so to judge her by a standard similar to that which we use to judge the candidates themselves just isn’t fair.Her megalomaniacal husband, on the other hand, can’t be judged harshly enough.The Trump campaign, and Trump himself, have continually played on the fears of a certain segment of the American population, and stoked those fears into a sort of unapologetic nationalism completely devoid of substance. He promises to Make America Great Again (which is actually the same slogan that Ronald Reagan used in 1980, without the “Let’s” at the beginning; even his slogan is a ripoff!), largely by blaming our problems on those people.From his blatant lies in which he claims to have seen “thousands and thousands of people” cheering in Jersey City as the World Trade Center towers fell, to saying that “some people [have asked] for a moment of silence” for the man who shot five Dallas police officers, to tweeting a graphic that originated as racist propaganda and claims to show crime statistics by race, Trump has repeatedly shown an ignorant, idiotic, pathetic irresponsibility that we shouldn’t tolerate from the lowest member of society, never mind the presidential nominee of a major American political party.And the truly frightening aspect of Trump and his campaign is their apparent complete detachment from reality. It’s as if they’ve decided that if they repeat something often enough it becomes true, and if they deny something often enough it becomes false.So despite irrefutable evidence—some of the words are exactly the same, in the same order, without credit, that’s plagiarism!—that Melania stole parts of Michelle Obama’s speech, Trump’s campaign manager can say with a straight face that it’s “just really absurd” that Trump plagiarized the speech. And Chris Christie (has anyone had a more precipitous fall from maybe-he’s-a-presidential-contender status to good-lord-what-a-joke-that-guy-is status than Chris Christie over the past few years?) can say, “There's no way that Melania Trump was plagiarizing Michelle Obama's speech.”No, Chris, what I think you intend to say is “There’s no way the Trump campaign can think they’d get away with such blatant plagiarism. They can’t think we’re that stupid.” Sorry, Chris, you’re wrong. They do think we’re that stupid.And they think that we’re that stupid because a large segment of the U.S. population has shown that we’re that stupid. More than thirteen million people have voted for Donald Trump this year. Thirteen million!That’s thirteen million people who have essentially said, “I want a man who makes fun of disabled people, thinks a Mexican judge is biased because of his ethnicity, retweets graphics containing Nazi propaganda, refused to disavow a former KKK leader’s support when first asked about it, believes that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the U.S., thinks that Ted Cruz’s father was with Lee Harvey Oswald right before he killed JFK, and thinks that Mexico sends their rapists to the U.S., to be the president of the United States.”It’s going to be hard to sympathize with a country whose judgment is so lacking that they decide to elect Donald Trump as president.I hope we show him that we’re not that stupid.Let me send you more Dry it in the Water posts!

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