Tag: money

Too Many Movies, Too Many Tropes I: The Heist Movie

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How do you know when you’ve watched too many movies? Some of us know the patterns and themes so well that the joy of discovery in most films is so gone that we probably won’t be able to thoroughly enjoy another movie until dementia kicks in.

The only thing we love more than puzzles and patterns is being able to figure them out. Our favorite classic and mainstream rock songs follow a A,A,B,A,B,C,B, and B verse-chorus song structure where A = verse, B = chorus, C = guitar solo. Steve Martin once said that three beats are funnier than four. Those of us who are not in these industries usually don’t see these patterns and structures for what they are, but we love knowing what will happen next. When it happens the way we predict, we richly reward those who make us feel smart, so they keep following the patterns. When we reach a point where we watch too many movies, however, we know the beats, patterns and structures so well that the joy of discovery diminishes.

We all have past times, and I spent my youth trying to watch every movie ever made, and the VHS movie rental stores in just about every strip mall in my big town/small city came very close to helping me achieve that. In the 80s and 90s, we could grab our groceries on the way home from work, buy a pizza, and rent a movie without walking a block. We did D) all of the above on weekends and some weekdays. It was so convenient that it was a little too convenient. It wasn’t as convenient as clicking a mouse, but you get the point. 

We had cable TV back then, and about forty different channels, but there was “nothing on!” so often that we rented movies to fill the gap. We ended up watching so many movies that we watched too many, and I can now look at the year a movie was made, its genre, and the superficial characteristics of the actors involved to tell you who is going to be the good guy, the most no nonsense, yet incredibly intelligent member of the crew, and who will end up being the bad guy. I can also pretty much tell you what rhetorical devices they’ll use to progress the plot, the tropes (i.e. recurrent themes, literary devices, and cliche) they’ll drop, and its conclusion. When we reach this point of watching too many movies, a genre such as the heist film, becomes so formulaic that our pleasure of discovery evaporates. 

Heist Films

“We don’t do this for the money,” is a trope that the typical, archetype character who masterminds a bank robberies issues to his naive apprentice who doesn’t understand why the money they stole is now a secondary concern.

Heist movies fall under the action genre, so no one expects the complexities inherent in a James Joyce novel, or a plot as rich as Oedipus Rex or The Alchemist. We just want action, a whole lot of fun, and some semblance of contextual logic. And that’s where they lose me, the logic, because if I were to rob a bank, I would do it to grab as much money as I could in the precious few moments I have. The movie bank robbers do that to complete the action sequence, but once the bank robbery scene is over, the money becomes a secondary concern to them for the rest of the film. 

“It’s not about the money,” the Joker said in The Dark Knight (2008) while burning a massive pile of cash. “It’s about sending a message.” Most screenwriters don’t have the characters in their script say this specific line, but they send the message through various scenes.  

Soon after the bank robbers celebrate their successful theft, they abandon the money when one of their fellow crew members is wounded or captured. “Can’t they help their crew member AND keep the money?” I whisper to my fellow movie goers. “It’s not all about the money, Larry,” someone will invariably say. It isn’t, and I get that, but these guys just risked their lives, their livelihood, and their freedom to steal this money. Label me with whatever pejorative you choose, but if one of my crew stubs his toe, I will cater to his needs AFTER placing the money in a very secure place.

If a romantic interest is endangered, or a personal code is tested, all of that money is left behind without reservation. Just about every movie ever made contains a love interest, and what kind of man would worry about their money when their love interest is in danger? If the filmmaker doesn’t have the mastermind do something, like throw all of his money off a bridge to save her, they’ll lose about 75% of the audience. I get that too, but again, can’t he find a way to save her AND the money?  

The money is a literary device, a MacGuffin, that filmmakers employ to define the character of their characters, and virtuousness thereof, but the paradox is that real life bank robbers only resort to robbing banks as a desperate effort to get money. The movie depicts these characters as clean cut, intellectual types who have a lot going on in life, and they just happened to choose bank robbery as a profession rather than becoming an electrician, a plumber, or a bus driver. Yet, even though they’re not as desperate as the typical bank robber, we’re talking about a lot of money, and my guess is most crews would experience a lot of dissent when the mastermind instructs them to give it all up.   

The primary reason movies about bank robbers are not about money is because we’re not about the money, and we find the pursuit of money icky. Movie bank robberies are about loyalty to our fellow man, the excitement of the plan to defeat a federal bank’s high tech security system, and the chase that follows. The money they make is nice of course, but heist movie filmmakers depict those who seek to quietly enjoy it, or use it to secure a comfortable retirement as suckers, squares, and rubes who believe in the power of the almighty dollar.  

The greater sentiment that is that these nuanced and virtuous fellas are not about living materialistic lives, and they find the thought of living like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg abhorrent, because Capitalism is soulless. This is made abundantly clear throughout the movie, but the crew could used some of the money they successfully stole to afford themselves a decent lifestyle while planning their next heist. “That’s not what this is all about!”  

These movies are about the slick and smooth mastermind, and his ability to research the details of the bank’s security system and locate its primary weakness. They’re about the mastermind and his crew executing that plan, but it’s mostly about the crew members, and how he assembled them for this one, last big hit. One of the crew members, the getaway driver, knows how to drive cars fast, and when I write fast, I mean fast. Another crew member knows how to handle himself in stressful situations, but he can be a little trigger happy, and the mastermind takes a moment out of the planning stage to virtue signal to those in the audience that he doesn’t want anyone hurt. He does this by cautioning his trigger-happy friend about controlling his violent impulses during this heist. The final, missing piece is Schmitty the long-since retired safe cracker who is the only one who knows how to crack the otherwise uncrackable safe that this bank has.  

The mastermind and Schmitty sit in an abandoned warehouse smoking cigars, drinking whiskey, and talking and laughing about old times, when the mastermind turns to him, “Do you think you can do Minneapolis again?” the mastermind asks. 

“That was a lifetime ago, MacDavid,” Schmitty confesses. “I’m retired, and I have grandkids. I’m old is what I’m saying, and the ears ain’t what they used to be.” 

 “We could really use you here, Schmitty!” the mastermind replies. “If you have one more in you, we could really use you.” The scene closes with no definitive answer from Schmitty, but he reappears later, to dramatically announce his decision with a leather-crackling bro hug.   

Depending on the gritty nature of the heist film, no one gets hurt during the robbery, and as all heist movie fans know by now, most of the money the bank holds is FDIC insured (It’s not. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures against various forms of bank failure, not bank robberies.) With that misinformation, those of us in the audience think bank robberies are the perfect crime, and we wonder why we don’t rob banks often. It seems like such a victimless crime.  

As we’re nearing the close of this heist pic, we’ve spent the last eighty minutes trying to keep our mind in the off position, because we know it’s about action and fun, but that contextual logic keeps nipping at our heels like a Chihuaua. They’ve pounded this idea that it’s not about the money so often that we ask, why did they take it? Why didn’t they just live their virtuous lives without the distasteful need for money? That’s just snarky, you say, and I agree. How about the movie makers have their characters run into the bank guns-a-blazing, point their guns at people in a menacing manner, and scream, “Everybody down. Everyone on the floor!” If they don’t have a Schmitty, they can find the vice president of the bank and force him to open the vault, and then once they have all of those piles of money sitting right in front of them, they walk away. They walk away without touching that money! Message achieved! Virtue unlocked! Take that! materialistic, greedhead who thinks it’s all about the money! By filming the scene this way, the filmmakers could provide a a culturally relevant statement against the system and the man who try to convince us that it’s all about the money.

“Why did we go through all that again?” the naive, unsophisticated young lad asks the wily, veteran bank robber who just masterminded a non-monetary robbery. 

“Because it’s not about the money, Chet,” the mastermind says with a squinty-eyed look and a grimace of disdain. “It’s never been about the money, and if you can’t see that at this point, get out of my car!”  

I could see writers and directors creating a character who disabuses the notion that his decision to become an animal husbandman was not about the money. “It’s not about the money, Chet. It’s about them,” he says with a loving gaze sent out to his cattle, “and if you can’t see that, get out of my barn!” I can see movies about individuals in various medical fields, areas of law, and even those involved in selling insurance saying it’s not about the money as much as helping people, but the idea that a bunch of bank robbers are somehow more interested in righting cultural wrongs, civility, and the plight of their fellow man over money just doesn’t square with me. And if you’re going to argue with me about movie makers sending important messages out to the greater culture, I won’t hear it, because I want a contextual alternative delivered by one of the characters in the movie. I don’t want subtext, meaningful omissions, or the slick, cool guy mastermind shaking his head saying, “You just don’t get it, Chet, and you probably never will.” I want an alternative specifically stated, but I know that no movie maker will answer because there is no viable alternative that an audience will buy.  

And that, fellow heist film fans, is the core of the “It’s not about the money” heist film philosophy. We don’t want our heist films to be simplistic, of course, and a dirt bag robbing a bank just for the desperate need for more money would be too simplistic for us to watch and too simplistic for a screenwriter to write. Screenwriters want it complicated, they love twists, complicated, conflicted characters, and a deep, rich plot they consider a reflection of them. The other, less complicated reason is that we don’t want to spend our hard-earned money watching a movie that is all about the money, and the moviemakers want to appeal to our worldview that the simplistic pursuit of money is just plain icky. The final, idealized statement that it’s not about the money is supposed to make us go, “Awww!” with a heartfelt smile. We could call the movie production studio’s writers and directors illogical, ideological, or even pathological for continuing to perpetuate this trope, but we’re the ones who rent, buy, and now click on their movies so often that they continue to create them with this heartfelt premise in it … for the money.       

The Quiet Quirky Clues to Our Core

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A baby, in the arms of her father, watched a line of adults proceed by her in church. She watched them proceed past with little interest. She watched them as I watched her, both of us looking at nothing until something caught our eye. Something caught her eye. She went from absently looking at people to intense focus. I turned to see what caught her attention. It was another daughter being held by her father in a different manner. The watcher and the watchee locked eyes for a couple seconds, and the moment passed, or so I thought. The watcher then wriggled herself into another position. “What are you doing?” her father whispered, looking down at her movements and adjusting his arms according to her wishes. When she was done finagling her fathers’ arms to her wishes, she ended up in the exact same position as the watchee in her father’s arms. I found her exposé into the human condition fascinating, because it suggested that keeping up with the jonses is just plain human nature, as opposed to learned behavior.

What does it mean? Does her mimicry reveal our innate need to achieve conformity, or the thought that we, even when very young, believe everyone else is doing it better?

***

Ever shake hands with a young kid, say seven-to-nine-years-old? They put their hand out vertical, but they add no grip, and their completion of the ritual is almost robotic. Adults apply meaning to this superficial, symbolic ritual. Kids just do what they’re told, the way we did when we were kids. They don’t know any better, we do. Yet, if we know better, what do we know? We think we gain special insight into a man by the way he shakes another man’s hand, but what do we gain? How hard is it to fake a great handshake?

“I never respected a man who didn’t shake a man’s hand,” my father-in-law said. “If a fella gives you a firm, but-not-too-firm handshake, and he looks you in the eye while he’s doing it, you know he’s a man’s man, and a man you can trust” 

“Fair enough,” I said, “but can it be faked?” It was a leading question, but I was also so curious about this staple of the insightful man’s definition of a man he thought he could trust on sight. 

“You can feel it,” he said.

That seemed preposterous to me, but he had a closing tone that suggested further interrogation on my part would be viewed as disrespectful. It was not my intention to be disrespectful, as I knew this man knew ten times more about reading people than I’ll ever know. He spent a forty-year career learning the difference between honest people and deceitful ones, and he was, by all accounts, very good at his job. 

I didn’t think my other questions were disrespectful, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that they were leading questions that asked him if he knew how wrong he was. So, I just shut it.

If I continued down this path, I would’ve told him about the weasel I met who knew how to shake a man’s hand, and he was so good at it that I thought, ‘Now that’s a handshake.’ I never put much stock in handshake readings, but this man had such a great handshake that it influenced my first impression. The weasel then spent the next twenty minutes trying to find creative ways to get me to part with my money. Piece of junk is what he was, but he had a nice, firm handshake, and he looked me in the eyes while he did it. I’ll give him that.

What does it mean? We think it’s a little cute that a young one doesn’t understand the complexities involved in the hand shake, and we dismiss the child’s failure to provide any data to our information-gathering exercise. As we age, we learn that a proper handshake conveys trust and respect, but some of us learn how to fake this customary ritual to mislead people. Relying on the knowledge we’ve attained from the meaning behind a great handshake is flawed. I’d much rather talk to them, watch them, and read them to learn the refrain in their brain.

***

“I wish I had all the money and love that guy had,” a young feller said referring to an NBA player who happened to be the son of a former NBA player. To paraphrase the Tina Turner song, What’s [Money] Got to do With It? Money can buy us all sorts of things, but there comes a point when the power of money ends.

At some point, money becomes an afterthought. Once we have enough money to support us for the rest of our lives, it’s “one less thing to worry about,” as the Forrest Gump character said. Name recognition is another powerful tool, as it can open doors for us, but once we’re in, we’re in. What do we do then? If we don’t have game, at some point, no one cares what our name is. Money can’t buy respect from our peers in school, at the workplace, or on the court. That’s where names are made and lost. When we fail, money won’t help people forget. Love and an excellent support system are the coin of the realm there. When I failed in school, the workplace, and in athletics, I would’ve loved it if someone said, “You’re going to fail, it’s what we do, it’s what we do the moment after we fail that defines us.” I would’ve also loved it if they added, “And when you fail, just know that you have me, the person who cares more about what happens to you than anyone else in the world, standing right behind you.”

What does it mean? We all know those cynical types who think that in one way or another, money solves everything. My guess is this is said most often by cynical types who never had any, because it is an excellent excuse to explain to ourselves why they haven’t measured up. We could list all of the players in our culture who never had a dime growing up, but that would be redundant. We all know that money does not help us deal with momentary failures, but we have to admit that if we didn’t have what we believed to be a quality excuse those temporary failures could crush us. If quality excuses help us get over speed bumps, what do we do then? Most of the successful people, I’ve met tell me stories of their no-money, no friends in high places rise, and I’ve heard a number of tales that detail trials and errors, and rock bottom, insomnia-rich, where-do-I-go-from-here failures that eventually lead to success. “How?” will be your first question, and your second question will be an unspoken, “What’s the difference between you and me?” Where did their inner drive come from? Their answers will usually be a frustrating amount of nothing really, except that they had an unwavering spirit behind them, often a parent, who provided support, guidance, love, and a whole bunch of other elements that taught them that momentary failure is nothing more than a learning experience.

***

I hear parents rewrite their past all the time at their kid’s baseball games. Mythologizing ourselves into an ideal image is just kind of what we do when we’re watching our kids play ball. This “They’re not as good as we were,” mentality helps us control the narrative of our lives by highlighting our character-defining moments to attempt to rewrite our character. Yet, when we’re telling our kids about the seminal, pivotal memories of our lives, how often do we “misremember” key details that never made it into our highlight reels? When we see our kids act in a somewhat less than aggressive manner, we’re despondent. “That’s not how I did it!” we say. Is that true? It is, because it’s how we remember it. It’s possible that we remember it correctly, but it’s more probable that we remember our highlight reels as opposed to our reality. It’s also possible that we’ve rewritten our past so thoroughly that that is genuinely how we remember it. I do this, you do it, we all do it. Our grandparents probably did it to our parents, our parents do it to us, and we do it to our kids. It’s so common that we could probably call this chain of rewrites human nature at this point. 

What does it mean? Our rewrites are an attempt to correct the past that we think might help us correct our present and future. They’re not lies, however, as we genuinely believe them after reviewing our highlight reels. Yet, the best rewrite we could possibly write is the one in which we try to escape the clutches of this chain. It could alter our kids future if we rewrote the mistakes our parents made with us. We may not want to recount our failures for them, but we could talk about how we dealt with adversity, moments of embarrassment, and humiliation. We could offer them a love and support rewrite that includes our own version of the “And when you fail…” note of support listed earlier that we wish our parents offered us?    

***

Alan “the neighbor” offered Ben “the neighborhood teenager” some advice on his game. The Ben, in our scenario, forgot everything Alan said two seconds after he’s said it, which made Ben the perfect repository for Alan’s otherworldliness worldliness. I wanted to tell Alan to “Save it” about halfway through his spiel, because other, more prominent types in Ben’s life offered him similar advice, and he didn’t listen to them either. Ben was all about achieving independence, or at least a level that made him immune to responding to advice. I didn’t say anything, because I knew this really wasn’t about Alan helping Ben improve his game. Allen just wanted to display his unique understanding of the human condition to us.

What does it mean? We all offer one another advice, and we all politely avoid listening to those who are kind enough to offer us some advice. Not only do I know people who act this way, I know I am one of them. There are a variety of reasons and excuses for why we don’t listen to anyone, but my advice to people who give advice is, “Save it! No one’s listening.” That’s dumb advice I know, because when we spot a flaw in someone’s game, or in someone’s life, some of us sincerely want to help them, and we can’t avoid trying to prove the knowledge we’ve attained along the way. The problem with us hearing such advice is that most of us believe doing the same thing over and over will eventually produce different results.  

***

We all try to help one another when we spot flaws, but you ever tried to get a senior citizen’s mind right on a passion project of yours? When I watch it happen a big, neon-flashing “SAVE IT!” crosses my mind. You have an opinion, we have an opinion, and the only thing that keeps some of us going is the belief that their opinion is uninformed, because it goes against our sources. Before we go about getting their mind right however, we might want to consider the demographic of our audience. Marketers have what they call a key demo, and they pay big bucks for ad space in a show that appeals to audiences between the ages of 18-49, because their intense market research suggests that they’re still susceptible to suggestion.

When we’re under 18, we’re even more susceptible to suggestion, but we don’t have any money. The 49+ demo have all the money, but advertisers don’t waste the corporation’s time or money trying to persuade them, because through market research they’ve learned that the 49+ mind is already made up. I’ve met the anecdotals, my aunt was an anecdotal. She thought adhering to the prevailing winds of change gave her a more open-minded presentation, and she hoped it made her appear fresh, hip, and younger. It didn’t, but she got a lot of mileage out of being anecdotal. Generally speaking, the +49ers stubbornly adhere to the patterns they’ve developed, and all the routines and rituals they’ve had for a majority of their lives.

What does it mean? Market research dictates that most of the 49+ demo is so loyal to the products they’ve consumed for years that they’re branded. So, go ahead and tell them your opinions, because that’s your right, but just know that you’re probably wasting your breath if you think you’re going to get their minds right on your pet topic, because they’ve aged out of anyone ever changing their mind on anything. If you disagree, go ahead and ask someone who spends millions trying to tap into the culture and reach the widest audience possible. The marketing agencies, and various marketing departments of corporations have decided that pouring millions into advertising to +49ers is equivalent to pouring money down the drain.

Once you’ve arrived at your conclusion, you might want to join me in my quest to get marketing teams to stop directing a portion of their advertising budgets to streaming services. If that fails, we should focus on getting them to offer a +49 opt out on button on commercials for those who’ve aged out of the key demo, because their beloved fast-forward thumbs are developing callouses.

My Advice, Don’t Follow my Advice

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“Try to find someone nice!” is the advice I give young uns. They won’t listen, and we know they won’t, because we know we didn’t. We had to get over our attraction to the naughty first. The naughty are just more fun and fascinating, and they’re mean. No matter how hard “they” try to redefine funny, mean is just funny, when it’s not directed at us of course. Their violations of social protocols and etiquette, aren’t just funny they’re relatively informative, in the sense that their exaggerations of the opposite teach us a lot about ourselves. Nice comes in very low on our mate-o-meter when we’re young. Nice usually comes after all the bad boys and girls beat us down.

“I don’t want to play games,” we scream, they scream, and we all scream for ice cream. “I hate the games people play, and I try to avoid drama.” Then why did you date them? We dated them, because even though they were jackballs to everyone else, they were actually pretty nice to us, for a time and in small doses, and that made us feel special. We also enjoyed the vicarious attachments people made with us when we were around the mean and naughty. After dating those who made us laugh so hard that we cried, and cried so hard we laughed, we eventually decided to go out with someone who did nothing more than say something nice to us while we were watching TV with them, someone who appeared to enjoy cleaning the living room with us, and preparing a barbecue for a family reunion. We found ourselves opting for the stability and sanity of the nice. Some might call that boring, and that’s fine with us after everything we’ve been through. My advice is to date the tumultuous types for all of the excitement and fun they bring, but make sure to break things off before you start hearing substantial calls for commitment.

Save Your Money, Man, Save Your Money   

Those wild, good times cost money too, and the good times never last as long as we think. It’s Oh-So-Good right now, and we have no reason to believe it won’t last.

Someone pays us, and we don’t deserve it. We earn it! We earn it every day, and in every way. We work as hard as we play, but there will come a day when that will fade away, and things will happen. Things always happen, that’s the thing about things. They slap us from so many different directions that some of them aren’t even listed on Google Maps. What happened?

Save your money man. Save for that day. “Save 10% of every paycheck,” they say. Others suggest we save the equivalent of three-months of our salary. Both those figures are low, far too low for me, but I’m a saver. Most people can’t, or won’t, save, and living the spartan lifestyle in the present just seems like a waste of life. Carpe diem, seize the day, and save until the end of the year. When we do the latter, and it’s “all good”, we blow it all. 10% and three-months salary is a decent compromise for them. “It’s just money,” they say, “and I would rather live a life of fun and adventure than have a nest egg. Plus, isn’t money the root of all evil?” It is, if you have it. When we don’t, we see it as the necessity it is, and we learn the definition of penniless powerlessness. We’ll also learn what it feels like to depend on others for everything, and dependency can be humiliating. It almost makes us feel like a child all over again. My advice, do everything you can now, when times are good, to avoid slipping into that spiral.    

We should’ve and could’ve spotted the spiral before it started to swirl. We know that now, and we see the pivot points now that could’ve changed it? If we had the foresight, we never would’ve gone left instead of right or right instead of left, at that crossroad.

Think about where we would be right now if we had some foresight? If I only applied for that job/promotion that I didn’t think I was qualified for, but I probably was. I mean look who ended up getting it. If I had older siblings, better parents, and I made more friends, or dated more often just think what I could be now. And college, college! If I paid more attention in college, my life would be oh-so different. We can’t stop thinking about how that person, equally qualified, landed our dream job or promotion, because they threw a relatively worthless degree in basket weaving at the “theys”. The best explanation I’ve heard for why this happens is that attaining that sheepskin displays perseverance.

Experience teaches us two things, college degrees don’t mean as much as we thought they did, and it’s better to have one than not. But, and there’s always a butt, how many of us would probably be in almost-the-exact-same-space we’re in right now, if we attained the golden ticket? How different are the lives of the college graduates in our peer group? Generally speaking, they got a job, and we got a job. Even with all that, there’s a super-secret part of us that thinks if we just paid more attention in Mr. Crippen’s Astronomy class, we could all be astrophysicists by now. It’s possible, of course, but it’s more likely that if our academic accomplishments landed us a job on the Starship Enterprise, we’d probably end up a red shirt sent to investigate the spiky colorful plants that shoot out deadly spores.

The Bonkers

Avoid “The Bonkers” if you can. Our parents introduced us to the Bonkers multiple times. The Bonkers were our parents’ friends, which pretty much means our parents were bonkers too, as opposites don’t always attract. Some of the times, people make friends because they share a worldview, and some of the times it’s happenstance, but commonalities often weave their way into friendships. The Bonkers have ideas about how the world works, and their ideas are always nuanced approaches that are subjective to their worldview, fascinating, and wrong. If my parents were bonkers-free, they would’ve stepped up on The Bonkers at some point and said, “Hold on, that, right there, is just insane. I know you’re not willing to die on that hill, but if the Chinese are correct in saying that every adult leaves a mark on a child, I don’t want that influencing my child.”  

The primary characteristic The Bonkers share is resentment. They have an explanation for why they didn’t achieve in the shadow of their boogeymen. They were the child who didn’t get enough attention, who became an adult that was cheated out of the system for a reason so bizarre they feel compelled to repeat that reality-shattering explanation at every outing. In reality, they didn’t have the talent, ingenuity, wherewithal or perseverance to make the big bucks, and they spent their lives characterizing, and re-characterizing, those who do. I met their boogeymen more than once, and I knew some of them. When I unmasked them, I learned they weren’t the boogeymen of The Bonkers’ resentful narratives. They didn’t have near the money, power, or influence detailed in The Bonkers’ tales, and they didn’t make calculated moves to hold the little guy down. They were just as insecure, normal, and common as the people telling their tales. To move these findings from slightly funny to hilarious, I learned that most boogeymen have their own boogeymen. 

One of the best little tidbits I’ve ever heard came from a total wreck of a person. She said, “You raise a child to a certain point, and no one knows  where that ends, but at another point you learn to stop raising them and start guiding them.”

Another friend of mine dropped this nugget, “The number one rule to parenting is to spend time with your children and be there for them. The best element of my dad’s inept parenting was that he always made time for me. He made so many missteps and unforgettable mistakes, but he was always there for me. You’re going to make mistakes with your kid, we all do, but if you spend time with them, it will edit and delete some, if not all, of your mistakes.” Time, in other words, heals all wounds. 

How much time do we have for them? How much time do we have in general? Most narcissists are so into “me time” that they should’ve entered that data into their reproduction algorithm before going down that hole. Is it more narcissistic to require more “me time” or more time? We don’t even know the definition of narcissism, but we’re all narcissists and none of us are. “Yeah, you’re talking about that other guy.” 

I’m a storyteller, and I tell stories the way others play chess. I appreciate the fact that readers want a streamlined point of focus, but I cannot help considering the other side. When someone provides me a story from their day, I immediately think about the other side. (For those who want friends in life, don’t do this. People don’t like this. They want you to side with them in their story.) Learned, intellectual types suggest that it’s impossible for us to be objective, this is what learned, intellectual types call hyperbole. Of course total objectivity is difficult to difficult to achieve, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to achieve it. Some don’t, and when I hear their stories, I can’t help but think about this situation from the other person’s perspective.  

When we tell our story, it’s filled with faults and variables. We’ve all had primrose paths and well-marked minefields on the map of our crossroads, and most of us chose the well-marked, yet uncharted minefields. When we detail for our children the ramifications and consequences of our actions, we conclude with, “But I know you’re not going to listen to me, because I didn’t listen to my dad. Your best scenario is to experience everything yourself, then remember what I said here today. If you learn to couple your experiences with my advice, as I did with my dad’s, you might turn out halfway decent.” He listens to me now, at this age. That will change, of course, but our job is not to build the structure, it’s to create a foundation from which they build.