Emus vs. The Australians

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‘Let them have land,’ was a decision the Australian government arrived at to honor, reward, and/or pay tribute to soldiers returning home after World War I. ‘What could go wrong?’  

“Anything that can go wrong, will,” we now say, almost reflexively, when we hear someone ask that question, citing the principles behind Murphy’s law.  

‘Who could possibly be against such a proposal?’ someone in the government probably said. They might have a point there, as the land in question was Crown land, state-owned, or land acquired by the state. By giving that land to the soldiers, the politicians thought they would appear generous, noble, and patriotic, and the soldiers could lead a quiet life of growing wheat as a reward for their heroism and sacrifices. The politicians involved considered it a win-win. The proposal gained momentum, because it promised that the unattended lands would be worked by soldiers, ostensibly generating more tax revenue for the country. 

The problem was that many of these soldiers didn’t know anything about farming. They were infantry men who knew how to kill people and break things, and they obviously knew how to survive on the battlefield. They did not know how to grow stuff. The politicians foresaw this problem, of course, and they provided the soldiers training farms in which they received extensive hands-on experience in general farming, dairying, poultry raising, and other agricultural activities. Private farmers and others provided government officials the essentials of farming to train these soldiers, including pest control measures and techniques to employ against insects, rabbits, kangaroos, birds, and any other animals who might eat away at their profits. 

The next problem arose when even those soldiers who knew how to farm learned why no private farmers bought the land in the Campion district of Western Australia; the land was crap. The quality of the soil was poor, and it didn’t rain very often.  

The government officials knew the land wasn’t great, and they admirably tried to do everything they could to help these soldiers-turned-farmers out, but no one could prepare for The Great Depression, and the collapse of wheat prices. After that, there was little government officials could do, and they likely felt horrible. When some of the landowners began complaining about an inordinate number of emus eating away at their profits, the government officials leapt at the chance to provide any assistance they could. 

They started by offering “no need to panic” information that detailed how the emus were following their normal migration patterns, from the inlands to the west coast, after breeding season. The government officials offered them step-by-step advice and sent them brochures about the techniques they could use to cull emu populations.   

The third problem arose when it stopped raining in the inland region. This drought caused the normal migration patterns to explode to roughly twenty thousand emus migrating to the coasts in search of food. 

The emu is an odd-looking bird. The adult emus can reach 6’2” in height and about 121 lbs. Emus are generally skittish and harmless, like most birds, unless you corner them or appear to threaten their young. The soldiers never feared they were in danger, in other words, but the emus began treating their wheatfields like their own personal buffet.  

The adult emu can eat around 2.5 lbs. of crop a day, and they were so fast and quick when they scattered that they proved difficult to impossible for the soldiers to catch or cull. The emus were also surprisingly strong, as they trampled the fences the soldiers put up, as if they were made of paper. This allowed the rabbits in, and the rabbits ate what the emus didn’t.  Even those soldiers who had experience in farming were overwhelmed, and they joined the inexperienced farmers in asking the Australian government for any assistance the government could offer. 

“Of course we will help,” Australia’s Defense Minister Sir George Pearce said. Pearce was speaking for a frustrated and helpless Australian government. There are no sources to confirm this interpretation, but I think the Australian government’s decision to attempt to cull the emus was a desperate attempt to do something in the face of a public outcry. There was nothing the government could do to improve the soil of the land they gave the soldiers, they couldn’t make it rain, and due to The Great Depression, there was little they could do about the subsidies they promised these soldiers.  

The Australian citizen probably knew all of the above, but some citizens think the government can fix whatever is happening to them. This outcry was intensified by the fact that the Aussies who were suffering were WWI veterans.    

The fourth problem was that the government officials thought this was something they could fix. There was little-to-nothing they could do about the farmers’ other problems, but culling a bunch of dumb birds seemed doable.

In his effort to do something, Sir George Pearce sent his best and brightest: Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery, Sergeant S. McMurray, and Gunner J. O’Halloran. Pearce also ordered Lewis machine guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition for them. Sir George Pearce and his defense ministry considered this such a great idea that they informed a cinematographer from Fox Movietone about the problem, and their proposed solution. All parties concerned thought this would provide some excellent newsreel footage for their audience. 

Before we continue, it should be noted that emus cannot fly due to their small, vestigial wings, reduced flight muscles, heavy bones, and evolutionary adaptations that favor running over flight. This might lead the reader to believe it almost unfair for hunters to have this much ammunition to take down a bird that cannot fly. If unfair is a harsh term, how about not very sporting to shoot ground bound birds with machine guns? 

The fifth problem arose when Major Meredith and his best and brightest contingent discovered that it’s not as easy to shoot stuff as they thought. If we have the best artillery human minds could create and the craftiest strategists the military found, the result is almost academic. We aim, shoot, and the thing is dead. It’s 1+1=2. The result on that first day was these decorated soldiers ended up firing about 2,500 rounds, and estimates suggest they culled roughly 50 to 500 emus. Meredith’s initial operation was widely viewed as so ineffective that contemporary reports claim that only a few had been killed. This led Meredith and his men to discover a sixth problem.

The sixth problem was emus do not form ranks, hold ground, and they don’t operate in patterns. There’s nothing strategic about what they do, so there is nothing to strategize over or figure out. They gather in herds, then they scatter into smaller groups, and they keep running. They’re not stationary targets. The three highly decorated warriors were equipped with a weapon optimized for densely grouped battlefield targets against thousands of highly mobile animals spread across miles of countryside. Meredith’s final report reads like a man trying to salvage dignity from absurdity. He praised the birds’ tactics. He noted their ability to absorb bullets and keep moving. He did not say the obvious thing: we brought the wrong tool to the wrong fight. 

Before entering into this situation, Pearce and his people should’ve consulted with experienced emu hunters, as even the most experienced emu hunter often describes the effort involved as a humbling, frustrating, and exhausting experience. The adult emu can sprint up to thirty-one miles an hour, and some have clocked them as high as forty-three miles an hour. They can also change direction on a dime. When they lined up these emus in their sightlines, however, they either underestimated their speed, or the crack of the gun scared the emus into changing direction on a dime. At the end of the first engagement, these experienced, highly decorated soldiers only managed a handful of kills of the fifty sighted.  

It should also be noted that these shots were taken after the locals in the area joined in on the effort and herded the emus toward the soldiers. The birds instinctually and involuntarily split into smaller groups and ran. 

Two days later they set up an ambush at a water hole. A thousand emus fell for it. The gunners waited until the birds were close. They opened fire, but the prized Lewis gun jammed after a few rounds. The birds scattered.

Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery later described the effort, writing that the emus had “the invulnerability of tanks.” 
The best and brightest tried mounting a gun on a truck and chasing the flocks. The terrain was so rough that the gunner spent more time holding onto the truck than shooting. One dead emu got tangled in the steering and the truck crashed through a fence. Meredith and his men realized that this was much more difficult than they suspected, and they suspended the operation.

The desperate farmers begged Pearce for another try. Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith of the Royal Australian Artillery and his two men returned on November 13th. 
This second phase lasted until December 10th. Meredith claimed 986 confirmed kills and estimated another twenty-five hundred birds later died of wounds. That works out to about ten rounds per confirmed kill over a period of one month, one week, and one day. 

For reasons endemic to human nature, Australia’s newspapers and their readers loved this humiliating exercise. They characterized it as the “Emu War,” and story was moving newspapers nationally and internationally. The writers and their readers loved the idea that a decorated defense minister, and his best and brightest, couldn’t effectively cull a bunch of dumb birds. They loved the idea that even though they had the best ammunition known to man and the benefit of the greatest military minds in their country, they were “outsmarted” by a bunch of emus. The idea that the warriors-turned-farmers were still suffering was basically viewed by these newspaper writers as the other side of a sensational story that they wanted to cover. They ended up devoting so little space to this other side that it’s fairly obvious they didn’t want to let something like human suffering get in the way of a great story.     

We cannot fault the Australian government, Pearce, or Meredith for trying, but the circumstances beyond their control became circumstances beyond their control. They ended up culling less than 1,000 of the estimated 20,000 emu infestation. Meredith eventually conceded that he and his men could not effectively cull the emus, and he was recalled, thus ending all military operations. 

Recognizing the futility of their goodwill, the government officials eventually decided to just give the ammunition to the farmers themselves, and they introduced a bounty system for every emu they shot and killed. The rifle-armed settlers proved far more effective than the machine-gun toting mercenaries. The rifle-armed settlers weren’t better shots, but they weren’t weekend warriors trying to prove their mettle either. They knew the land better than Meredith’s men, they were invested in the success of their efforts, and they had the time necessary to take out the tens of thousands of emus who were destroying their friends’ fields.  

We could mock Major Gwynydd Purves Wynne-Aubrey Meredith and his men for failing to effectively cull a bunch of birds. They would probably confess that they were fighting a war against an enemy they didn’t understand. They would probably add that even though the emu is not blessed with the brain size that we normally associate with intelligence, they underestimated how intelligent the birds are. As those who establish modern scientific standards for animal intelligence later found, emus are not dumb birds. They cannot outdo crows or parrots on intelligence tests designed for birds, but they show some surprising abilities to solve puzzles, and they’re capable of noteworthy levels of innovation, memory, and adaptive learning.  

The seventh problem arose when the government officials and the soldiers realized that in reality this was never a win-win situation, it was a lose-lose scenario. Even if they achieved their ultimate goal of effectively culled the emus, no one would be cheering them on, because the general sentiment would’ve been, “You did your job, what do you want from us an Ice Lolly?” They realized that in operations of this nature, the reason they resonate with the public is that it’s human nature to cheer on the underdog.

When we read the headlines like, emus vs. Australians, The Emu War, or humans vs. emus, we’re all cheering for the emus. We all cheer on the most helpless underdog of every situation. If, for example, there is a minor tragedy that killed numerous humans and one puppy named Fluffy. The media will find an image of Fluffy, or a picture of the breed, and Fluffy will become the local, statewide, and national symbol of the tragedy. Fluffy will become the helpless underdog in that story for the audience, in the same manner the emus were in this story. Yet, the other side of this story was that a bunch of veterans-turned-farmers couldn’t make ends meet for a variety of reasons, including that a bunch of emus were devouring whatever slim profits they should’ve made.   

The other side of the story is that even without all the hurdles these soldiers-turned-farmers faced, farming is not only hard, it’s fraught with failure. For those who don’t know anything about farming, the idea that someone might call it a full-time job is a gross understatement. The typical farmer doesn’t have a social life or even much of a family life. Modern technology has made farming less arduous, but in the early 20th century, farming consumed a farmer’s life. And to have the blood, sweat, and tears they put into it go into a wild animal’s belly, should elicit, at least, equal amounts of sympathy. As we’ve detailed throughout this article, the emu infestation was only one element of the “all kinds of hell” these soldiers had to endure.  

The government officials, Pearce, and Meredith knew this, and they did everything they could to help. Did they overdo it, did their desire to do something in the face of their inability to help the farmers in other ways, lead them to overdo it? Were some of their motivations political? They wouldn’t have invited a film crew to film if it wasn’t at least a little political, but it’s tough to argue that their goals weren’t noble. 

In the end, the matter was eventually resolved by the government providing farmers ammunition and providing a bounty for every emu carcass. Perhaps that influenced non-farming Australians to join in a more extensive and long-term extermination strategy. The farmers also employed better fencing, which led some to believe the long-term resolution didn’t involve killing emus as much as trying to make it as hard as possible for the emus to enter the farm fields and damage the crops. 

Hindsight is 20/20 of course, and it’s our natural inclination to read such a story and think we would’ve done things so much different and better, in the beginning, when it really counted. Those of us who are longtime fans of Swamp People can’t understand why the Aussies didn’t introduce the tried and tested, and age-old bounty system from the very beginning. There are no sources to suggest this, but we can guess that someone somewhere in the Parliamentary debates, correspondence, or local administrative officials introduced this proposal in the beginning. The problem was that the public outcry for government officials to do something for these veterans reached a fever pitch, and the officials wanted to do something tangible and substantial that they could point to in the next election as a record of their efficiency. The something they did led them to do something without considering the warning that whatever can go wrong will, a word of warning that later became Murphy’s Law.

Napoleon vs. The Bunnies

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France was one of the most powerful countries in the world between 1805 and 1812, largely thanks to a military leader who many historians rank among the greatest of all time: Napoleon Bonaparte. Some historians still place him alongside Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Genghis Khan in that regard. In 1806, Napoleon Bonaparte led a mighty French military, back when no one dared laugh at putting those two words in the same sentence. What happened? Some cite war fatigue among the soldiers and citizenry, some suggest coalitions against French rule, economic problems, the Battle at Waterloo, and various other reasons, but no esteemed historian cites The Battle of the Bunnies.  

In his on-again, off-again leadership of France from 1799 to 1815 under various titles, Napoleon fought roughly eighty battles, and he won nearly all of them. France encountered most of their defeats in the final years (1812–1815) of Napoleon’s rule when French forces experienced battle fatigue.

Among the greatest conquests of French history, was Napoleon’s defeat of Prussia and Russia between (October 1806 – July 1807), that occurred over the course of roughly nine months. By all historical accounts, Bonaparte crushed Prussia and Russia. He brought them to the negotiating table at what was called the Treaty of Tilsit to discuss the terms of their surrender. Those treaties left Napoleon in control of most of western and central Europe and temporarily turned Russia into an ally.  

Napoleon considered the Prussian and Russian victories the greatest of his tenure, and he considered the territory gained by the Treaty of Tilsit such a huge victory for France and his regime that he wanted to celebrate it. He probably said something like, “Victories like these don’t come around but once in a lifetime, and I want a party that commemorates them!” The problem for this military mastermind was hew couldn’t figure out a perfect celebration.

After discussing this with his administration, reports state that Napoleon’s chief of staff, Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier, came up with an idea, “How about we put together a huge hunting expedition on my estate?” Napoleon loved the idea. Buoyed by Napoleon’s approval, Berthier invited Napoleon’s most loyal and members of his imperial entourage, plus local beaters. 

After securing the R.S.V.P.s, necessary for this gathering, Berthier put together a lavish outdoor banquet for all involved. He wanted everyone to celebrate and have fun, but his primary goal was to impress Napoleon with a gala befitting his victories. We might assume that such a party would involve alcohol, but Napoleon was not a big fan of adult beverages. The lone source of these events, the memoirs from a General named Paul Thiébault’s state that Berthier’s goal was to conduct a huge formal, imperial outing as opposed to a wild, drunken celebration.    

To complete this celebration, Berthier ordered his subordinate to find a bunch of rabbits for the hunting expedition that was to follow the outdoor banquet. We don’t know how much time his subordinate had to find and trap these rabbits, but he chose to purchase these rabbits from local farmers. Thus, the rabbits the subordinate purchased rabbit for this celebratory hunt that were largely domesticated “hutch” rabbits that the subordinate found to forego all the time and effort required to trap wild ones. We can also speculate that the subordinate who was put in charge of securing enough rabbits for a celebratory hunting expedition wanted to impress Berthier with the number of rabbits he was able to find in the limited time frame he was given. We also don’t have any firsthand accounts of this from General Thiébault’s memoir or any other sources, but we can speculate that the subordinate worried that these domesticated rabbits might be too tame, and they might not provide much in the way of a sporting hunt. To remedy this, he probably instructed the local farmers to deprive the rabbits of food in the days leading up to the hunting expedition. The subordinate’s hope was that this might lead the rabbits to be extra lively, crazy, and eager. 

The problem with that order was the 2,000 (a rough estimate by General Thiébault’s account) domesticated, tame rabbits that arrived on chief of staff, Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier’s property arrived incredibly hungry, and they associated humans they met there with food. Much to Berthier and his subordinate’s chagrin, when all of the carriages carrying Napoleon, his best soldiers, and the most loyal members of his administration arrived, the 2,000 rabbits began swarming them. The rabbits were so hungry and pursuing the prospect of food so aggressively that Napoleon and his entourage were overwhelmed by them.

As the rabbits began clamoring all over one another around the soldiers’ legs, and they even began aggressively climbing up on their legs, the first thing that went out the window was the idea of a sporting hunt. The rabbits obviously weren’t running away. They were running to, and onto the men. They were clamoring all over one another to be closer to the nearest human, to be first in line for food. 

The whole scene was embarrassing of course, but Berthier had to be mortified when the rabbits did the same to Napoleon. The hunting party and Napoleon began trying to fight the rabbits off with sticks, rifle butts, and riding crops, but they could not deter these rabbits. There were just too many of them, and they were so hungry and aggressive. These mighty soldiers eventually had to do something no Napoleonic force had to at that point in his reign. They had to retreat and basically surrender to an overwhelming force. They ran back to their carriages, but the rabbits continued pursuing them. The rabbits even, according to Thiébault’s memoir, began breaking into groups and flanking the fleeing party. A few even managed to scramble aboard Napoleon’s Imperial Carriage before he could get away. 

Anytime I read a crazy story like this, my sense of creativity goes to the beginning, the ending and everything in between to what we’re not told. Who was the first member of the hunting expedition retreat, and did the other members of the party in attendance laugh at him, before they eventually realized that was the only course of action? With the rabbits clamoring all over one another so aggressively, my bet is one of the rabbits’ nails scratched one of the soldiers. “OW!” Martin screamed mistaking that scratch for a bite. “He bit me. One of these blasted things bit me!” Was there an incident of this nature that led the others to say, “One of those things bit Martin. I’ve survived countless battles with humans. There’s no way I’m going down over some disease these things probably carry on them. I’m outta here!” What did they say to another, in their carriages, in retreat? I’m sure Bonaparte ranted and raved about what a disaster this expedition was to Berthier, if Berthier rode away in the carriage with him. If Berthier rode with his subordinate, we can guess that some physical admonishment followed the Q&A regarding the details of what the subordinate did to set this day up. “All right,” Berthier probably said before striking the man, “but did you have to get 2,000 of them?” Those strike me as more typical reactions. What intrigues me more are the conversations that probably occurred on the carriages that carried the soldiers. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, they were embarrassed, and they needed to talk it out to get it out of their minds. 

“What was that?” First Officer Dubois asked Officer Petit, as the two of them ride away from the field of bunnies. 

“I don’t know,” Petit responded. “There were so many of them. I’ve never seen so many rabbits in one place before. There had to be thousands of them. After Martin got bit, it was a little scary out there.” 

“We’re the most powerful military in the world,” Dubois said. “If word gets out about this-” 

“The lesser said the better,” Petit interjected before Dubois could complete that sentence. 

“But people will talk.” 

“Why would they?” Petit asked. “Why would anyone say anything about this to anyone? Even if they’re drunk, trying to be funny, and trying to tell the wildest tale at the bar, why would they admit to any of this?” 

“You’re right,” Dubois said.  

“You watch, we’ll have some unofficial decree that comes down about how we’re not to say a word about this to anyone.” 

“Agree.” 

 “I’m talking wives, daughters, and drinking buddies,” Petit said. “I’m talking about burying this so deep we won’t even talk about this in our sleep.” 

“Agreed.” 

We don’t know what happened before, after, or any of the other details that happened between, but one of the greatest military minds of his generation, a man many still rank among the greatest military leaders of all time, and the conqueror of conquerors was forced into an undignified retreat —not by a coalition of kings, but by a few thousand hungry domestic rabbits that mistook him for their feeder. These bunnies didn’t require a grand strategy, a coalition, and they didn’t need Allied and Prussian support. They just needed to be bunnies that don’t act according to plan. This loss in the Battle with the Bunnies was considered so embarrassing that those involved decided the only course of action was to “expect” everyone involved to avoid talking about this day. There is no record of an official decree of silence on this topic, and we know of no unofficial decrees either. This expectation was obviously successful, because no one did talk about this incident, until a General named Paul Thiébault mentioned it in his memoirs that were published after his death in the 1890s, roughly 50 years after it happened.

Teenage Rebellion: Stage I

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“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Soren Kierkegaard 

I thought my teenage rebellion was so intense that it might give me some insight into the subject. I might not be not an expert on much, but I could probably give seminars on teenage rebellion. Now that teenage rebellion has done an about face, and it’s in my face, I’ve realized tis’ better to give than receive, and as with just about everything involving the complex human mind, teenage rebellion is so situational that we can only learn from it going forward. 

The circumstances that defined my teen years are so different than my rebellious teenager’s that I cannot use my model to understand his better. I was an angry young man, due to situations beyond anyone’s control. Those circumstances deprived me of a normal maturation process, and I was righteously indignant about it. Give me something to be righteously indignant about, back then, and I righteously indignanted it. It made me angry, and I didn’t care what it was. My son is not near as angry, because he does not have as much to be as angry about, so his rebellion isn’t as intense, but he does need to define himself, and I am his opposing force.  

“I actually worry about boys who don’t rebel,” I used to say to fathers who complained about their rebellious sons. “Rebellion is a boy’s way to develop his own distinct and individual personality, and they do so in direct contrast to their dad’s. Most men, I know now, who didn’t rebel against their dads when they were teenagers turned out to be relatively uninteresting adults.” I still think that observation holds, but my theoretical arguments recently met reality with my own kid. I realized that it doesn’t matter how we look at it, teen rebellion always hurts a little. I’m learning that I’m no longer his idol, his reason for being, or his joy in life. I knew this was coming, we all do, as some form of rebellion is almost an inevitability. Yet, it still hurts a little to learn that we’re now playing the bad guy in their production, and one of their goals in life is to find a way to destroy our Death Star. 

Rebellious Stages 

“I hate you!” they say, to kick off the first stage of their rebellion. I’ve heard other parents who were genuinely damaged by this coming-of-age comment, because their kid said it with such a mean face, like they actually meant it. “They’re sending a flare up to see how you react to it. I’m not saying they don’t mean it. They mean it, like we meant it, but they’re dumb kids, like we were. We didn’t know what we were talking about back then, and they’re as dumb and immature as we were.” 

In their ever-maturing mind that isn’t mature yet, they’ve discovered that we aren’t the greatest thing since sliced bread. “You’re dumb!” he says with and without using those words. It’s part of the process.

If we die before they hit their teen years, they’ll have our legacy preserved in amber, and they will spend their whole lives trying to live up to whatever idealized image they dreamed up about us. If we’re lucky enough to survive long enough to see them mature to their teen years, we’ll learn how many faults we have. They view their existence as that of a prisoner in a jail cell whose only mission in life is to escape. They’ll examine our fortress for the smallest chink, and they’ll use it once they find it. If we’re lucky enough to survive into their thirties and forties, we might eventually see them circle back to the idea that we’re not as dumb as they thought we were. If these progressions aren’t universal truths, they are close.  

“I have free will” he told me at the store to kick off the next stage of his rebellion. He said this after I questioned the item that he wanted me to purchase for him. I suggested he purchase another item, and he stubbornly refused. He considered this ‘free will’ line, a line he learned while studying The Constitution in class, the perfect comeback. I could see it on his face. 

“You do have free will,” I said, “but the force of your free will will be offset by another force, a fiduciary one that will arrive when we enter the checkout aisle. When fiduciary requirements limit your free will, that constraint will be met by a different and opposing force, mine.” 

His definition of rebellion has changed, progressed, and evolved, and my responses to it require an equal measure of progression. He, like most boys his age, is a robot. He doesn’t view the world emotionally. He doesn’t care if his statements hurt my feelings, as far as he’s concerned I’m as automated as he is, and it doesn’t do either of us any good if we become animated about it. His brain hasn’t matured enough to embrace empathy or sympathy yet. He requires logic, rational thinking, and a psychologically sound rationale from me. In these moments, he doesn’t like me, but he doesn’t dislike me as much as I disliked my father. Even if his revelations on the limitations of my intelligence and my horrible characteristics progress, I know I can’t let my desire to get him to like me get in the way of doing what I think is best for him.  

It’s all about the small stuff at this point, I don’t like the shirt he’s wearing, I don’t like his hairdo, and I don’t like the way he overreacts to silly, stupid things, but we’re just entering the first act of our production. He’s starting to make his own conscientious choices, and in that tiny arena, I know nothing, but I’ve heard genuine non-sarcastic admissions to his friends that they should go to me for answers, “Because he always seems to know things.”  

My dad was a serious man, introverted unless he was drinking, religious on Sundays, and a narcissist. I tried, in every way I could think up, to be the exact opposite of all that. He wanted me to get good grades, because he didn’t want to get in trouble with the in-laws. I like to think I’m more concerned with his well-being, his happiness, and his ultimate successes in life. I celebrate his momentary successes, and I criticize him for his failings, but I’m not so old, or so far removed from the situations he faces, to know how hard it is to succeed academically and athletically. I tell him that I can advise him and steer him in the right direction, but at some point, he’s going to be on the field or behind a desk by himself. One of the biggest differences between my dad and me is that I’m in the stands, literally and figuratively, cheering him on. I tell him this when he rebels. I tell him that we’re on the same team, but it doesn’t make a dent, literally or figuratively.  

My advice to anyone experiencing such a dilemma is that if your son is between the ages of thirteen and twenty-six, he is not fully formed yet. As painful as their rebellion can be, at times, they’re trying to discover their individuality, and that definition will be formed at our expense. No matter how unlikable, unreliable I am as an intellectual, or how inconsistent I can be, by his definition, I will continue to try to be a strong, consistent beacon in the darkness for him when matters become too complicated and chaotic for him. I also know that as we travel down this road together, I should probably grab onto something for stability, as this is only stage one.

Those of us who have never been the Death Star before wonder if they’ll ever appreciate what we’re doing for them? I know I didn’t appreciate what my dad did for me for a long, LONG time. As I raise my son, I reflect on one of the mistakes/lessons my dad taught me. My dad made the mistake of expecting praise, appreciation, and/or personal rewards for everything he did for me. It’s human nature to expect that, right? As my dad learned the hard way, they might arrive, but we’ll have to eat right, exercise regularly, and be one of the lucky ones who lives long enough to hear it.