May 06, 2004

self-esteem

One of the biggest mistakes we ever made in this country is hatching the notion that schools can teach "self-esteem" to young minds full of mush. NOBODY can teach self-esteem and you damn sure don't do it by praising inferior performance or protecting delicate ears from words that may offend them. Self-esteem is something a person develops for himself or herself and it doesn't come overnight and you don't order it in a cafeteria line.

You earn a sense of self-esteem by suffering a few of life's hard knocks, stark realities and unfair breaks and then overcoming them. Success breeds self-esteem. And I'm not talking about anything handed to you by your parents or some nitwit teacher, either. I'm talking about things you did all by yourself, even when you didn't believe that you could.

I see that fact when I watch Quinton play baseball today. I don't like parents who watch their boy strike out on three pitches he never even saw because he had his eyes shut, and then cry, "Good Try, Buddy!!!"

Bullshit! That wasn't a good try. It was a pathetic exhibition of ineptitude and the boy needs a lot of batting practice, not empty praise, to teach him to do better. That's what I did with Quinton. A year ago, he was scared to death of a baseball coming at him. I threw him a lot of grounders and taught him to get in front of the ball and get his glove down while keeping his eyes open.

Yeah, he got beaned a few times by a funny bounce. But the more he worked at it, the better he got, and the few dings he took are just the price you have to pay sometimes to master a difficult task. He kept trying, and he got better.

Now he plays shortstop on his team and he struts the field like a cocky bantam rooster. He REEKS self-esteem. (Bejus, but he reminds me of me sometimes!) He's got the right to act cocky, because he fucking EARNED IT, and he can back up the strut with his play.

Many times when I was young, I believed that my father was a stern man and harder on me than most fathers were. I realize now that my father simply set some pretty high standards and expected me and my brother to live up to them. He was a true believer that nothing in life worth having comes easily. He came from the "grab it and growl" school of thought.

I remember two incidents from my childhood that pretty well reflect the way I was raised. The first came on my opening day of football practice, when I dazzled the coaches and became a starting running back for the team. My father watched that practice and when it was over, he said, "Rob, you're a NATURAL. You know the game, you've got good instincts and you play hard. But you're too little, too slow and not strong enough to get by on natural talent. You're going to have to work harder than some of the other guys do if you want to play."

I was stunned. "Dad, I did great out there. I thought you would be proud of me."

"I am, son," he replied. "But this is little league. Half of those boys out there playing against you don't have a clue what they're doing. You do. That makes you a big fish in a little pond right now, but if you keep playing ball, you're going to hit bigger ponds filled with bigger fish. The game becomes more difficult the higher up the food chain you go. You've got the brains, heart and balls to play football. But you're going to have to work harder than most to get what you want later down the line."

Later down the line, I discovered that the old man knew exactly what he was talking about. I worked harder than most because I had to. That sweat paid off, every drop of it. I never forgot that lesson the rest of my life. It still pays off for me today.

The second incident happened when I made my first straight-A report card the first six-weeks of seventh grade. For years, my father promised me $5 if I brought home a straight-A report card. In elementary school, handwriting always doomed me. I could make five A-grades in the academic subjects, but I always had that shit-stained "C" for handwriting bespoiling my otherwise perfect report card. (My handwriting remains a scrawl to this day.)

Ha! In seventh grade, I didn't need to worry about handwriting. I didn't get graded for it, so I made the straight-A dream of my life. I ran all the way from the school bus stop to home that day. I couldn't wait for my father to come home and see that report card.

That was one of the biggest disappointments in my life.

My dad looked at the report card, said "Good job," and peeled a fiver out of his wallet. He handed me the bill and said, "Now you've shown me that you can do it. I don't expect anything else from now on."

That's all I got out of what I envisioned to be a ticker-tape parade with me on a gigantic float with a crown on my head. "Good job. And anything other than perfection is a fuck-up from now on."

Maybe that was harsh of my father, but that's the way he was. He believed that taking second place still made you a loser. I damn sure never received praise for LOSING in ANY situation, and I received faint praise when I excelled. But I learned a valuable lesson, one that my dad told me at least 1,000 times:

"If it was easy, any asshole could do it."

Life ain't easy. You had better jock up tight and get ready to be hit when you go out there into that cruel, pitiless world. If words offend you, get thee to a nunnery or a monastary and take a vow of silence. I could give a shit about your precious "self-esteem" if you can't handle reading the word "nigger" on a blog. I've been called worse names in my life and I didn't curl up in a fetal position and cry myself to sleep. Take political correctness and shove it up your ass sideways.

Do you know what political correctness really is? It's stealth censorship. It's pointy-headed nimrods protecting the self-esteem of people who don't fucking DESERVE any self-esteem because they can't handle the real world. They are the assholes who want everything to be easy.

Well, it ain't folks. And it never will be.