Lessons Learned from Dad: Road Safety!

Hey Everybody!
It's update time and with it another wisdom filled episode in the "Lessons Learned From Dad" saga! But first the news...

We've recently returned from a 4 DAY LONG FAMILY REUNION. Neisha will say, "Isn't that awesome!" I will say, well I won't say anything because I'd get in trouble. But I survived and am still alive to write in the blog! Anyway, we're back to almost normal which is about two levels beneath insanity :)

And now, another lesson learned from dad.

Fathers are great. Never has there been a creature so willing to go through so much in order to teach a simple lesson. For example when my dad showed us kids the importance of not playing in the road.

There comes a time when every child must learn not to run out into the street. There are real dangers out there! Not the least of which was my dad attempting to teach us the danger of playing in it. Poor laundry basket. (Allow me to explain).
One day we kids were out playing in the yard and my dad walks up carrying a wicker laundry basket and says, "C'mon kids I'm going to teach you a valuable lesson." Now if you know my dad then you'll know that when he says "C'mon kids I'm going to teach you a valuable lesson" that two things are going to happen: #1, you will most likely witness something that is about to go horribly wrong and #2, it will most likely involve electricity, cars, or tools, and usually results in pain (see The Lesson Of the Crank Washer).

Today's lesson took place in 1982 and involved the Blue Goose (our family car which was a 68 Bel Air Chevy and closely resembled a tank with blue paint on it), a wicker laundry basket, and a serious amount of overkill. He began by telling us that "playing in the road was really dangerous and if a car were to hit us we could be killed." Not wanting to leave it at that he said, "Kids, it's really important that you know this so I'm going to show what would happen were you to be hit by a car." Then, taking the laundry basket he placed it in the road and said, "Kids, pretend this is you. I'll be right back." he then got in the tank and drove off down the road out of sight.

There we stood at the side of the road wondering why we were pretending to be moms laundry basket. Odd. Then, from off in the distance we hear the unmistakable roar of a fast approaching, large engined tank that sounded a lot like the Blue Goose. We looked down the road and sure enough, dad was racing toward us with a crazed "I've always wanted to do this!" look in his eye.
"Is he going to run over mom's laundry basket?" my brother asked. The answer came about two seconds later as dad, reaching flux capacitor speed slammed into mom's wicker laundry basket with the force of a train. Words cannot describe the look of utter shock on our faces as mom's favorite, I might add, laundry basket was turned into a handful of wicker toothpicks. A minute later dad came back, rolled down the window and said "So never play in the road ok?" I think we spent the next six months hiding in the basement. In the corner. Behind the boxes of Pop Shoppe Pop. You know, I never did find out how my dad explained the whole thing to my mom. I can just imagine the conversation now:
"Hi Honey! Hey a, remember that laundry basket you used to have?"
"What do you mean 'used' to have? Yes, I still remember it. It's my nicest one. What have you done to it?"
"Who me? Well, nothing really. It was mostly the car. Do you want to go out to dinner tonight?"
"Lou, Where is my laundry basket?"
"Ah, it kind of broke. You see I was teaching the kids about road safety and I wanted to show them what would happen to them if a car actually hit them and well, I couldn't very well run one of them over so I had to find something similar."
"Are you trying to tell me that you used my NICEST laundry basket as a crash test dummy!"
The rest of that conversation would probably not have been g-rated so I'll stop there. And you know, as weird as that whole thing was we all still remember not to play in the road.

Follow up 2009: in the spirit of trying to be a good parent I told my kids about it hoping to instill in them a healthy respect for the road. Their response? "Awesome! Let's run over all the laundry baskets!" sigh.

Let the Blind Receive Their Sight!

Time to update the ol' family Blog and what an update we have! But first, the Obama minute:

Obama was recently reported to have taken his wife out on a "date night". Excellent. It is important to take time off from the overwhelming responsibility of telling the world what a horrible country we live in. The date was a raging success. Michelle Obama said it was "a wonderful evening". Well, for $22,000.00 it better be a wonderful evening! So my question is, was it the dinner and a movie that made it wonderful or the fact that the $22,000.00 was tax payer money? On a side note, don't you think that for 22K you might be able to do something more creative than dinner and a show?

Back to the update...The boys all took first place in their division for baseball and are proud to have their trophies. It seems they are quite talented in many sports. Including the time-honored, traditional Johnson sport of--Dad Pounding. Yes, it's been happening for years. I'm sure I'm not the only dad whose neck and back have been permanently disfigured by their sons. My pain story starts way back with Josh as a strapping young 4 year old Jump Bonk Jedi whose favorite game was "Kill the Dad Dragon". This progressed through the stages of Dad Whacking, Ninja Neck Jumping, and finally Get the Evil Geezer where I pretty much lay on the floor and pretend to be dead in the hopes that they'll lose interest and just go away. Alex and I were wrestling yesterday (I got a coupon from him on Father's Day to do this), and I had him in a good tickle hold. At this point he yelled, "Dad stop it! I'm gonna pee!" At this point I don't know if he's faking it or really serious so I let him up and off he goes to my bathroom. This is where it gets funny. This is what I hear:
[toilet flush] "Dang it! I wasted it!" Alex appears looking frustrated.
"Wasted what?" I ask.
"My special power" replies Alex. Ok. He was just in the bathroom. He did something bathroomy in there and now he's upset that he wasted his "special power". I'm totally torn between morbid curiosity and TMI.
"Uh, what 'special power' are ya referring to there Alex?" - Curiosity won out.
"My toot!" Alex says with all the exasperation he can muster. "I was saving that!"

The other big of news concerns my oldest son, Blind Boy Casey. Neisha took him into the eye doctor. After enlarging the letters to roughly the size of a car, Josh proudly announced, "It's a black thing!" Needless to say he failed the eye exam and needs glasses. So we got some contacts. After he put them in it was like he was seeing for the first time. "Mom, this is totally cool! I can read the medical labels on the files!" "Wow! Mom, I can read that sign! I didn't even know those words existed!" "Hey Mom, look at the playground! I can actually see stuff. Before it was just like colorful blobs!" Now before you call us bad parents for not noticing this, there wasn't anything to notice. Josh told us he's been seeing that badly for years but thought he'd just grow out of it. It never affected his schooling either. Oh well. He's loving life now and is currently sitting outside enjoying clouds. Life is good.

So until next time, enjoy sight. And next time you pull up to the drive-through bank window, ask them why they have braille in the drive up stall.

Lessons learned from Dad: Hammer Toe

A June welcome to everyone across the until recently fruited plains! I recently went to pick up my government cheese but couldn't fit it in my government car. Oh well. I did find a use for the car, though. I attached a spinning blade to the bottom of it and can use it to mow my lawn now! Talk about green!

Anyway, life with Team Johnson is great guns as usual. We are all slaving away in the backyard to make it habitable and have decided that weeds look a lot like grass. :) But enough banter! On with today's title:

This is one of my childrens favorite stories to hear. It usually starts out like this: "Dad tell us about the time you whacked yourself on the foot with a hammer on purpose!"
"Well", I say, "it wasn't really my fault." This is one I those stories where I wish there was actually a point or a profound lesson to be learned but no. The lesson is pretty much don't do stupid stuff. And that lesson glares at me more and more every time the kids make me tell the story. As a young child I went to the doctor to have a surgery done on my big toe and the doctor shot my foot up with Novacaine (not to be confused with Michaelcaine). I couldn't feel a thing. It was pretty cool. To a 10 year old, having a numb toe is like a whole new world. Well when I got home I accidentally kicked the door with said toe and didn't feel a thing! Way cool! No pain!

Now, as a young child I began to wonder about this new phenomenon. "I wonder if it would hurt if I..." and that ultimately was my downfall. By now you have all probably come to the conclusion that I actually hit myself on the toe with a hammer. I've never understood what makes a kid think this way, how they can go from a rational thought like "Hey this cape makes me look like Superman" to "I'll bet I can jump off the roof and fly!" but it happens. And no I didn't jump off the roof! It was the trampoline and it was really windy. So there. Kids just have a way of taking a great thing like imagination and then doing it. How else could I explain my children's behavior? What else but imagination would make my oldest son create rain by using cat litter? What else but imagination would make a child decide while in the tub to bite his younger brother and then blame it on a rubber shark?

Needless to say after whacking my toe several times and experiencing the awesome power of no pain I went on with my day. Until the novacaine wore off. Owie! Well, stay tuned for more fun with Lessons Learned from Dad!

The Best Dating Advice. Ever.

Well it is time for me to write something happy in the old family blog and get the Bamster's new youth army out of there. Yeech. Life at the ranch is great. The kids are all playing baseball and having fun with it, the sprinklers are watering most of what they're supposed to, and the trees are a bloomin. To catch you up on landscaping adventures I am learning how to lay flagstone (how not to lay it more like) and how to pull out weeds. Man I love that! There's nothing quite like the satisfaction of having been so successful at growing them.

Neisha and I were recently spotted in the ballet production of Sleeping Beauty where we played courtiers and later a prince. It ended up being kind of fun. No I didn't wear tights and no mom, I'm not gay. Sheesh.

Now on to the title. As some of you know, Josh is 12 and on the brink of entering the age of unbelievable. As much as we've tried to parent the alien out of him we're noticing irregular bulges in his stomach region and a strange murky odor that seems to seep from his room. While driving around the other day he gave some of the greatest dating advice I've ever heard. Yes I know he's only 12 and won't date until he's 16 but that's ok. I'm writing it down now for posterity sake. While in the car he pointed to the Christmas Tree air freshner and said to mom, "Mom someday when I need cologne I can just hang one of those around my neck!"
Mom: (through near uncontrollable laughter) I can just see you with a 'smell' necklace.
Josh: I wouldn't wear it on the outside of my shirt, I'd put it on the inside!"
Mom: (Through totally uncontrollable laughter) I just love you Josh, you're so great.
Josh: Well, it smells like cologne...

Yep, that's my son. Mr. Vanilla-roma. His other dating advice was around the subject of what to feed your date. Josh said his idea of a creative date was to have a dinner where he put real bugs in the brownies. It would add a little crunch and his date would likely never know. It would be highly entertaining....for him. Mom said he'd better date someone he didn't like very much. Josh said, "Why?" Now why is this such great advice? Because if he follows it, it should nicely guarantee that he won't date much before going on his mission. Maybe I'll wait to tell him the real scoop until afterwards. Good times, good times.

Well that's all the news that's fit to print. Stay tuned next time for Lessons Learned from Dad. My kids have been nagging me to write about when I hit my toe with a hammer on purpose. sigh.

I just can't ignore this

I usually stay away from politics on this blog, but this really troubles me. These are OUR children he's talking about!

Supporters of an Americorps expansion plan pending in Congress laud its efforts to "leverage" federal dollars to boost state, local and other resources to "address national and local challenges," while critics say its fine print secretly would create an "Obama-styled army of community organizers modeled after Saul Alinsky's 'Peoples Organizations.'" So which is it?
In an era in which Congress can approve thousands of pages of legislation spending hundreds of billions of dollars without reading the proposal, there seems to be no definitive answer on what some of the vague language of H.R. 1388 means.
But there is enough in the "GIVE Act," now awaiting a conference committee in Congress after being approved by both the U.S. House and Senate, to cause critics to shiver.
For example, it certainly imposes a requirement for public service on some people, even though its original much-feared study on mandatory service for all was moved to another bill during congressional debate.
"The Audacity of Deceit" exposes exactly who Barack Obama is. He isn't pedaling "change you can believe in" – he's planning to uproot American culture and replace it with the failed, secular, socialist policies of the past.
The latest version includes a "National Service Reserve Corps" whose members have completed a "term of national service," "has successfully completed training" and "complete not less than 10 hours of volunteering each year."
It also raises First Amendment issues over its limitations on what various corps participants are allowed to do.
For example, it states those in an "approved national service position" may not try to influence legislation, engage in protests or petitions, take positions on union organizing, engage in partisan political activities, or, among other issues, be "engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of proselytization."

Probably the biggest red flag for many is how the proposal fits into the overall picture painted by President Obama when he described to a Colorado Springs audience a "National Civilian Security Force" that he wants as big and well-funded as the U.S. military – a staggering suggestion that would involve hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
WND reported when the bill began its quick trip through Congress, and its original language called for a study of how best to implement a mandatory national service program for citizens of the United States.
Later the language was dropped from that bill, only to appear at the same time in another legislative proposal.
Judi McLeod wrote for Canada Free Press that the bill simply would turn everyone into a community organizer.
"Everybody means the roughly seven million people called to public duty in the $6 billion National Service effort," she said. "But members pressed into the service of the one million-strong Youth Brigade, sanctioned by 'Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education (GIVE),' will have none of the freedoms of the community organizer who started it all.
"There's no room for God in Obama's long promised Youth Brigade, no room to protest, petition, to boycott or to support a strike, and loopholes to give its mandatory membership a pass," she wrote. "Obama's plan requires anyone receiving school loans, among others to serve at least three months as part of the brigade."
She also describes one section with a program to introduce "service learning" as "a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency."
The plan suggests raising the participation in such programs from 75,000 now to 250,000.
Gary Wood at Examiner.com said it's part of Obama's plan to set up national service. He noted the explanation offered by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel: "It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, all Americans between the ages of 18 and 25 will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service."
Gary Lester, writing at All American Blogger, put into words the worst fears of opponents.
"Hitler knew that if you control the youth, you control the future. I wrote about him in 'The Threats to Homeschooling: From Hitler to the NEA.' As I noted in that article, Hitler said: 'The Youth of today is ever the people of tomorrow. For this reason we have set before ourselves the task of innoculating our youth with the spirit of this community of the people at a very early age, at an age when human beings are still unperverted and therefore unspoiled,'" he wrote.
He cited the Hitler Youth's launch in the 1920s. In 1933, the participants totaled 100,000, and in 1939 the membership was compulsory for those over 17. Two years later, the membership was compulsory for those over 10, and it included 90 percent of the nation's youth.
He also cited concerns it would steer volunteers away from churches, politicize charity and focus on the "education" of participants.
"The legislation will, in many circumstances, force our children to participate in charitable activity as part of school – and that activity may well be chosen by or approved by a bureaucrat," he suggested.
At Washington Watch one forum participant warned, "Our republic is under attack as never before."
Said another, "This is social engineering at the very least, and could be the first step towards the reinstitution of slavery! Take heed, the New World Order (aka 'Change') draws nigh!"


Congress also is considering a "public service academy, a four-year institution that offers a federally funded undergraduate education with a focus on training future public sector leaders."
Joseph Farah, founder and editor of WND, used his daily column first to raise the issue of a "national civilian force" and then to elevate it with a call to all reporters to start asking questions.
"If we're going to create some kind of national police force as big, powerful and well-funded as our combined U.S. military forces, isn't this rather a big deal?" Farah wrote. "I thought Democrats generally believed the U.S. spent too much on the military. How is it possible their candidate is seeking to create some kind of massive but secret national police force that will be even bigger than the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force put together?
"Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? If not, why did he say it? What did he mean?" Farah wrote.