30 March 2007

A Nation of Sissys

I was listening to the radio this morning and they were talking about how i believe Wisconsin has decided to stop all negative chatter at little league baseball games. They are also going to give every player a trophy for participating. My gosh, what has this country come to?

I remember when i was a kid and my elders would talk about " back in their day" and i used to laugh. Now i have become one of them. When i played baseball, you had winners and losers. I think it taught everyone a valuable lesson. If you never taste the sour of defeat you will never appreciate the sweetness of victory. Beside having everyone win totally sets the kids up for failure in the work place.

After our baseball games that we won, our coach would buy us a Coke and a Frito Pie. If we lost we got squat. We learned a lot from that coach. It pays to be a winner.

How can we continue on this course. We can not continue to reward kids for being fat and being bench warmers but they showed up. Someone needs to tell them that fat bench warmers are always known for saying "Would you like frys with that?" Teach them that it pays to be a winner. I promise you that they will need that more in their adult years than trophies for showing up.

I remember my Dad telling me that he wanted more for me than he had himself. That is a wonderful ting to do for your kid but, what made him a great man was not what he had, but what he didn't have and how hard he worked to get it. I consider myself lucky. I grew up like my Dad. I worked rice farms, soybean farms, horse ranches and hay farms. I learned how hard it was to earn a dollar and to save that dollar. Although my Dad wanted me to have what he didn't have, by me doing what my Dad had done made me a better person. Maybe it is not a good thing for a parent to want more for there kids. There are only so many computer and office jobs out there. Everyone wants their kids to have a great low work kind of job. We need craftsman.

A skilled craftsman will make more than an office worker. It is not shameful to be a craftsman. We need to change our focus on our kids and teach them what we know. Teach them to weld, to fix their car, to plant a garden and teach them that working with your hands is not a bad thing. Anyone who is a good craftsman will move up faster and higher than someone who has an office job. We need to be proud of our blue collar skills and pass them on. Just my opinion.

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