What you are, I once was. What I am, you will be
My dad has said that to me since I was a teen. As a kid, I gather he was in trouble a bunch. He saw that in me and cracked down on me hard when I was young. He was a drill sergeant. Made me do my homework. Made me take college prep courses and forbade me from taking shop classes. Made me get a job. Made me do chores.
If he hadn’t, I’d probably have never finished school and would either be dead now or in prison by now. I realize that today. Not then. Now, I have a couple of degrees and am doing OK.
I see a lot of me (and, I suppose, him) in my son. Same mannerisms. Same thousand yard stare. Same “don’t give a fuck” attitude. Same “I will challenge you” demeanor. I worry about that. This is why I am hard on my son. Harder than I am on my daughter. I see it in him. He’s me. He’s what I was. I’m what he will be.
My wife asked me why I’m so hard on him. I owe it to him, I replied. My dad did it for me.
Thanks, Dad!
September 15th, 2013 at 8:15 pm
I hope your son reads your blog. He won’t agree with it now, but he ought to remember it when he gets older.
September 15th, 2013 at 9:14 pm
My dad had it easy. I took after my mom, and had an easy temperament. My sister, on the other hand, is another story. She turned out OK too, but they butted heads quite a lot when she was a teenager, probably because they were too similar.
I butted heads some with my mother, but more intellectually than really having it out. I am very sorry I never got to know her as anything more than a 20 year old, because there are some arguments we had that I won be default by outliving her (and one of those was the ‘gun’ argument)
Of course, one other thing I inherited from my mother was a resistance to hangovers. It used to drive my dad nuts, because he was decidedly not resistant. She’d be as drunk as he was and was up fine early the next AM. I am the same way.
September 15th, 2013 at 9:59 pm
Just keep in mind that you’re riding herd. Burn that piss and vinegar out of them, and you’ve got “subjects.” I know, not likely with your genetics, but I’ve seen it happen. Hell, I’ve seen it be the goal.
September 16th, 2013 at 3:31 am
Made me take college prep courses and forbade me from taking shop classes. – See more at: https://www.saysuncle.com/2013/09/15/what-you-are-i-once-was-what-i-am-you-will-be/#comments
Might want to reconsider that one, if Mike Rowe is right about the “skills gap”.
September 16th, 2013 at 6:43 am
The only place I had heard the title quote from before was from a tombstone.
September 16th, 2013 at 9:17 am
I’ll second what Seerak said. I went with college prep classes in high school and got a degree because those are things that smart kids are supposed to do, and I’m fairly certain that I’d have had a happier and more productive life if I hadn’t.
September 16th, 2013 at 9:29 am
Not meant as an insult. Rather at my high school, there was a certain element that occupied building 8.
September 16th, 2013 at 10:34 am
I don’t know if this post is the result of some weird parental ego thing that I don’t understand but your son is not you.
He is his own person, and I hope to God he proves that to you someday – despite your best efforts and limited imagination.
September 16th, 2013 at 10:40 am
Yes he is. But there’s a lot of me in him.
September 16th, 2013 at 10:47 am
I opened the comments page to say: I hope your wife understands that — some women seem not to. And then there’s breda demonstrating my point.
September 16th, 2013 at 11:16 am
I was a big f***up as a teen. (Still am, but that’s a different story.) If I were to attribute it to anything other than bad character, it would be trying to conform to peer values (so-called friends) and not knowing that my only real friends were my family. If you can protect your kids from their “friends”, most of the job is done.
Wild imaginings; believing bulls*** you read, watch or hear; low risk-avoidance; those come with the territory of a teen. Best you can do is be there to catch your kids when they fall.
September 16th, 2013 at 11:18 am
Just saw Breda’s comment. She has no kids, right?
September 16th, 2013 at 11:26 am
Don’t necessarily assume that because one approach worked for you it’ll work on him as well. He may have a ton of the same mannerisms as you, yet not be exactly the same nor respond the way you did. Just my 2 cents.
September 16th, 2013 at 11:31 am
Breda declined into a troll a while back.
Sad, but true.
September 16th, 2013 at 11:51 am
No, I’m sorry, and I take it back. It was my father, not my mother, who worried about the guns, the motorcycles, the girl I moved in with that my parents had never met. Maybe because she trusted me more, or maybe because she had given that responsibility to my father.
September 16th, 2013 at 12:10 pm
Give me the boy till he’s 7, and I’ll show you the man.
September 16th, 2013 at 12:17 pm
My father rode me hard until I finished law school and grad school.
He made me study as a child and as a young man.
I had chores, cut grass and got a job with a paycheck when I was 16 (cleaning tables as a busboy).
He, my mother and the nuns and priests who educated me also ingrained manners in me.
I have always had an intense fear of poverty, and I suspect it came from my father.
If I had a child, I would do what you are doing to raise him (or her).
September 16th, 2013 at 12:33 pm
Amen, Uncle.
My dad was pretty tough as well, and occasionally my mother will regret the way “treated” me.
I’m grateful to God that my Father was as “rough” on me as he was, and for the same reasons you are.
September 16th, 2013 at 1:19 pm
The older I get the smarter my Father becomes.
September 16th, 2013 at 2:41 pm
Your dad as a drill sergeant makes me wonder if he got the same choice from a judge that my grandfather got: “you can wear a uniform with stripes on the sleeve, or one with stripes all over. Your choice.”
Of course, once guys like that are given an opportunity to direct that drive into productive things in the service, they end up like my grandfather, career senior NCOs.
September 16th, 2013 at 3:30 pm
My Dad wasn’t such a drill-sergeant but I wasn’t much of a danger to anybody or even much of a class-cutter, so I got to be lazy anyhow and went to “College” – and it’s his Birthday today and I still love him.
September 16th, 2013 at 3:39 pm
“Breda declined into a troll a while back.”
No, she was always a jealous, greedy, vain twit quick to criticize and expound on shit she knows not shit about. But it took a lot of apologists and fanbois a long time to realize it.
Sorry about that Unc, but that comes from the heart and for good reason.
But the part in your post about no shop classes? Didn’t you write a while back about using your hands more than those degrees these days? If the kid can’t take vo-ed classes, then take him to work with you. Other than that, you’re doing great, do NOT listen to the coddlers even if they are family…ask me how I know about that one.
September 16th, 2013 at 4:05 pm
That’s a tough one. My father was something of a son of a bitch– a drinker and a fighter, and generally mean. When I was a young man I decided I was going to be a real father. I was going to teach my kids things, spend time with them and so on. I think a lot of us (most of us) tell ourselves the same thing, that we’re either going to be the model parents we never had, or we’re going to be the model parents we did have.
Either way we figure we’re going to mold and shape our kids into something we consider to be ideal, but I don’t think it works that way.
So I’ve asked my wife this question in our conversations about the kids. “Is our goal keep them out of trouble, get them degreed, have them respected by OUR peers and have them become what WE consider sucessful such that we can be proud of them, OR do we want them to be good people- the individuals they were born to be, keeping in mind the possibility that we may not have a clue what they were born to be?”
Those are not necessarily the same thing. They might be and yet they might be opposites.
I’ll add this little tidbit to the mix too;
Culture is a conspiracy against the individual. Not the particulars of any particular culture, but culture in general, practically by definition.
September 16th, 2013 at 5:14 pm
Wonderful thoughts, Lyle. There’s a thin line between authority figure and authoritarian. Sometimes we rationalize the bad behavior of our parents cause ultimately we can’t imagine our lives being any different than they are. In all honesty we had little choice, but we have to believe in something.
You can do everything for your kids and they can still do bad things, but at least you can say you’ve given them every chanc