My good friend and sometimes underpants-peeking stalker Stumpy, daughter o' Platypus, forwarded me some interview questions and asked that I fill them out. As much as I hate being assigned homework - particularly by someone with a spotty record on doing her own - I'll answer as honestly as I can.
1. Name one (or more if you’re having a bad day) thing that really annoys you.
I am always annoyed by rudeness. Good day, bad day, any day - if someone is deliberately rude to me or to anyone around me, I will always respond.
I have upbraided total strangers in restaurants for being impolite to their servers. I have loudly chewed out people in line ahead of me in grocery stores for being nasty and dismissive to the person checking their groceries through.
Some of the people reading this have seen how I respond when I get to any blog and someone has left a rude comment directed at a friend. I am articulate, direct, forceful, and cheerfully and unapologetically vicious. If you choose to be rude or cruel to people I care for, I can and will cut you.
2. How would you like to be remembered?
I've thought about this recently, because I was at a funeral for the father of one of Erin's best friends. There were a lot of people there, and some folks got up and said some wonderful things about this man. I didn't know him - I'd gone to the funeral just to be there for Erin - and I found myself regretting not having met or known the man.
As I sat there, I thought "What would people say at my funeral? More to the point, what would I want them to say?" (I know it's morbid, but I suppose we all think about these things at at one time or another.)
In the end (or AT the end), I'd like to be remembered as a man of passion. Passion for life, passion for the people I love, passion for work and play and laughter and yes, enough passion to shed tears if that's what is called for.
I don't have time to spend with people who feel no passion. They are sponges who absorb positive energy and feed nothing but negative back into the world. Avoid them. William Arthur Ward once said "We can choose to throw stones; to stumble on them; to climb over them; or to build with them." Surround yourself with people who choose (and it is a choice) the last two.
I want to be remembered as one of those people.
3. 3. Of all the things you’ve ever done, of what one thing are you the most proud?
My proudest moment - and I know this was not the question - came on opening night of the musical I wrote called "Maritime Star". The theatre was jam-packed; I sat in row 4 with my wife and two daughters and my collaborator, the great Island songwriter Allan Rankin, as well as my Director, David Sherren. David occasionally had to reach over and soothingly touch my arm when I would tense up as an actor struggled with his lines.
But the audience clearly enjoyed the show, and at the end there was that moment every playwright dreams of, when the play is done and the actors have taken their bows (a standing ovation), and then the cry goes up: "Author! Author!" Allan and I went up on stage, took our bows as well ... and I looked down to see both my daughters literally weeping with joy and pride.
So that was a proud moment - but for the thing that I'm proudest of, I am going to take shelter in the trite and predictable, but no less true answer: my wife and I put a lot of thought, energy, sleepless nights, and love into raising two daughters who are kind, thoughtful, smart, funny, wonderful people - people I would be proud to call my friend, the kind of people the world needs more of. I wake up every morning blessed by what they bring to my life, and while their accomplishments are theirs alone, I do take pride in how they turned out as people.
4. 4. We know you are ‘The Wise & Powerful Nilbo’, but what’s the wisest thing anyone’s ever told you?
My Dad is about the wisest man I know. I hope one day to be half as wise, but in the meantime I have acquired some smarts along the way (by osmosis, mostly).
Oddly, though, the wisest words I've ever heard came from my mother, who had pithy little pieces of advice for every possible situation. One time when I was crying as she flushed my dead goldfish down the toilet, she rolled her eyes and said "Oh, stop blubbering, for God's sake; he wasn't going to grow up to be Prime Minister!" Good perspective, that.
Another time, when I sat there aghast as she calmly picked the baby's soother off the floor, examined it, wiped off some fluff, and jammed it into the kid's mouth, she looked up at me and snapped "What? Oh, for Chrissake, it's pretty hard to kill them, you know." (She had six kids, and I'm pretty sure there were times she tried.)
Mom would get impatient if we agonized too much over what we would wear to school or parties; "Nobody is going to care or remember what you wear tonight except you. Just get dressed and go. You are more than your clothes."
Other nuggets from Mom:
"In ten billion years the sun will have burned out and the earth will be a frozen block of ice hurtling through space, and this petty bullshit you are so worried about will not matter a damn."
"Don't take drugs or drink too much. Nobody needs to intentionally make themselves more stupid. Especially not you."
"Don't name your child anything that wouldn't sound right with "Prime Minister" [or, I suppose, "President"] in front of it."
But the best advice she gave me was about child-rearing. Mom was a big believer in keeping kids on a tight leash and letting them earn rights and freedoms and trust. As we got older and proved we could be trusted, the rules relaxed. Finally, they were down to two simple rules:
"Don't do anything life threatening; and don't do anything life-altering."
Driving drunk? Life threatening. Unprotected sex? Possibly life threatening, possibly life-altering. Committing a crime? Possibly both. Doing heavy drugs, developing an addiction - certainly life-altering. As long as our actions were neither life threatening nor life-altering ... well, she might not want to hear about them, but she encouraged us to expand our horizons.
My girls have heard that phrase more times in their lives than they can count. Since they earned our trust early on, we've only had to be reassured that whatever they planned to do that night would be safe and not lead to a major life change. More information isn't always the best thing.
"Do nothing life threatening and nothing life-altering." For young people, I can think of no wiser advice. And I think your mum would agree.
5. 5. What do you want to be when you grow up?
This presupposes that I want to grow up. I don't. I have no control over the fact that I will grow older. But I refuse to grow up.
That being the case, I'll go on doing what feels right at the time.
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