letters to my brother
The first week I had my driver's license I drove the car into the side of a stump hauler and caused about a thousand dollars of damage. in retrospect, I made a bad decision. in retrospect, i should never have been on the road. I rode country rodes with mom in the passenger seat. I can still remember not being sure how to jockey the gas and make it work. I felt the same way driving with you to glassboro this last summer, when I thought the light camera went off.
most of what I've discovered being home is nothing to do with you. some of it is. I spent a decent amount of effort getting you to the gym. I don't know where that energy came from no where. maybe i wanted to go to the gym and I just took you with me. I don't know. I doubt it. I hardly ever do the things I don't like to do, even when it's to my detriment.
I've seen you take it to new levels. and I never want to take credit for how far you took it.
you're popular now. people know you and believe it or not you do have friends, and possibly women interested in you, whether you believe it or not.
youth is a funny thing. you don't want to be told anything, it's like you have a fresh take and everything is different and some of it actually is.
but let me tell it like I see it. your parent's are going to drive you into a hole. they don't know it and maybe they're too old at this point to care, but I do. they give you what you want but they don't give you what you need. in a way your father treats you like the fragile thing you were four years ago. you treat yourself the same way in a lot of ways.
they don't push you or demand stuff of you that most parents would.
you think maybe that demands are a reprimand at this point.
you think it's ok to give ted the finger when he tells you to do the dishes and you think it's a win when you don't do them. you think it's ok to cuss your mother out when she gets you up for school. you take a day off from school and you think you're entitled to it. entitled.
do you know what entitlement is? it's when someone expects something they didn't earn. it's for rich people. and that's the worst kind of insult. it means that if i turned you out without your support network that you never knew existed, you would be helpless. for someone who prides himself on self-reliance it's ironic and a joke.
I think a lot of advice comes from people being mad at other people. because they had what they didnt'. that's not where I'm coming from.
you ask for 300 dollars to become a real trainer and that's not an entitlement, that's ambition. but when you say you're going to sell drugs on the side that is.
and let me be honest with you. when i was in high school I carted things out the back door at where I worked. at eckerd drugs, now rite aid, I used to take empty boxes full of stuff out the back door. vitamins. pens. notebooks. nothing they would keep track of but it was all mine. they didn't pay me and I took it. i justified it because they didn't pay me. I got away with it but for the grace of God. I knew where the cameras were and that they never looked at them until a crisis hit. 5 cameras! hah. we were open until 10pm, that's 15 hours on each camera. every day they took 60 hours of footage. yeah, sure they were looking all the time. sure they were. they didn't realize that the best way to ensure your employees aren't stealing is to show them gratitude for working. they weren't willing to pay the cost up front, so they paid it out back, whether they knew they were or not.
I was raised christian. I know that doesn't mean a lot but the morals show through. I felt real guilty about that stuff, and every bit of hardship I went through after, I thought it was because I was being punished for stealing. true or untrue. melanie. sometimes I think she was a manifestation of that. now I look back and think it's silly.
you look back on some of these thing and it's like 2-d working ond 3-d. you know something of this feeling, since you've been lifting on your own. when i told you to keep your back straight when doing a military press you would snap on me, ask for weight you really couldn't handle, you bucked the saddle, as it were.
i see you and I see a person that wants something real. but that's so ironic. what's real is earning it hard, and then having the knowledge to know that those that make it often don't have to. for someone who has suffered so much it seems like you want to play that old record over again, except you want to be the oppressor this time and do what they did to you. that's not a solution. it's a cop out. it's saying your overweight because mcdonald's just tastes so good.
there is one thing I learned from melanie. if it's the easy choice it's not often the best choice.
we exist because we want to tell you the things we did wrong and the things we did right. not everything is the execution of power in a downward slope. when people care about you they tell you things you might not want to hear, but they do it so that you can learn from the mistakes they made.
so when I tell you that you're entitled, i'm not saying it's your fault that you are.
i just don't know how to make you realize that you are. and that it's not good for you. that's their job. but they have been malfeasant.
most of what I've discovered being home is nothing to do with you. some of it is. I spent a decent amount of effort getting you to the gym. I don't know where that energy came from no where. maybe i wanted to go to the gym and I just took you with me. I don't know. I doubt it. I hardly ever do the things I don't like to do, even when it's to my detriment.
I've seen you take it to new levels. and I never want to take credit for how far you took it.
you're popular now. people know you and believe it or not you do have friends, and possibly women interested in you, whether you believe it or not.
youth is a funny thing. you don't want to be told anything, it's like you have a fresh take and everything is different and some of it actually is.
but let me tell it like I see it. your parent's are going to drive you into a hole. they don't know it and maybe they're too old at this point to care, but I do. they give you what you want but they don't give you what you need. in a way your father treats you like the fragile thing you were four years ago. you treat yourself the same way in a lot of ways.
they don't push you or demand stuff of you that most parents would.
you think maybe that demands are a reprimand at this point.
you think it's ok to give ted the finger when he tells you to do the dishes and you think it's a win when you don't do them. you think it's ok to cuss your mother out when she gets you up for school. you take a day off from school and you think you're entitled to it. entitled.
do you know what entitlement is? it's when someone expects something they didn't earn. it's for rich people. and that's the worst kind of insult. it means that if i turned you out without your support network that you never knew existed, you would be helpless. for someone who prides himself on self-reliance it's ironic and a joke.
I think a lot of advice comes from people being mad at other people. because they had what they didnt'. that's not where I'm coming from.
you ask for 300 dollars to become a real trainer and that's not an entitlement, that's ambition. but when you say you're going to sell drugs on the side that is.
and let me be honest with you. when i was in high school I carted things out the back door at where I worked. at eckerd drugs, now rite aid, I used to take empty boxes full of stuff out the back door. vitamins. pens. notebooks. nothing they would keep track of but it was all mine. they didn't pay me and I took it. i justified it because they didn't pay me. I got away with it but for the grace of God. I knew where the cameras were and that they never looked at them until a crisis hit. 5 cameras! hah. we were open until 10pm, that's 15 hours on each camera. every day they took 60 hours of footage. yeah, sure they were looking all the time. sure they were. they didn't realize that the best way to ensure your employees aren't stealing is to show them gratitude for working. they weren't willing to pay the cost up front, so they paid it out back, whether they knew they were or not.
I was raised christian. I know that doesn't mean a lot but the morals show through. I felt real guilty about that stuff, and every bit of hardship I went through after, I thought it was because I was being punished for stealing. true or untrue. melanie. sometimes I think she was a manifestation of that. now I look back and think it's silly.
you look back on some of these thing and it's like 2-d working ond 3-d. you know something of this feeling, since you've been lifting on your own. when i told you to keep your back straight when doing a military press you would snap on me, ask for weight you really couldn't handle, you bucked the saddle, as it were.
i see you and I see a person that wants something real. but that's so ironic. what's real is earning it hard, and then having the knowledge to know that those that make it often don't have to. for someone who has suffered so much it seems like you want to play that old record over again, except you want to be the oppressor this time and do what they did to you. that's not a solution. it's a cop out. it's saying your overweight because mcdonald's just tastes so good.
there is one thing I learned from melanie. if it's the easy choice it's not often the best choice.
we exist because we want to tell you the things we did wrong and the things we did right. not everything is the execution of power in a downward slope. when people care about you they tell you things you might not want to hear, but they do it so that you can learn from the mistakes they made.
so when I tell you that you're entitled, i'm not saying it's your fault that you are.
i just don't know how to make you realize that you are. and that it's not good for you. that's their job. but they have been malfeasant.