There are boundaries in blogging which limit some of the stories you might read upon these pages.
It is why some details are sometimes left out, obscured and or adjusted. This is not a legal document or academic treatise that requires absolute truth.
I prefer it this way because my goal as a writer is to provide you with a canvas you illustrate based upon the simple foundation I share and your own imagination.
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Some months back someone issued a strongly worded challenge that I ignored.
I used it as a teaching moment and made a point to show my son what had been sent and told him I was going to ignore it because it wasn’t worth my time.
A couple of days later my son asked me what happened and I told him the person who had challenged me kept poking the bear.
“Dad, why are you ignoring them? That is probably why they keep poking you.”
I smiled and said I had nothing to prove and that I was too busy to deal with the sort of mishegoss this person was trying to generate.
What I kept to myself was that I had already decided if the poking kept up I was going to come out of retirement and give this person the sort of beating that would make them think twice about playing with fire.
It’s worth noting my competitive fire burns brightly and I don’t like losing. I am usually pretty good about being graceful about it, but I would be lying if I said there are moments where it is harder than I wish to admit.
So when the mystery person poked hard enough for me to want to play I thought about Sherman’s words and figured if this is where my mind is going I probably shouldn’t play.
There is nothing to prove.
I didn’t just beat them once, I thrashed them twice.
Ask me if I engaged in any trash talk and I will neither confirm nor deny I responded. But they did send about a dozen messages so maybe I touched a nerve.
Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
Sometimes the youngest Wilner male chooses to test his mettle against me and I tell him to stick to games of strategy and not brawn.
That is because the kid is a natural strategist and if I don’t work hard he will beat me, not every time but enough for me to know to take him seriously.
I have a love/hate relationship with losing to him, makes me proud to see how smart he is but frustrates me a little.
Physically he is not quite there yet, I may not be who I once was but I am not that far off and I still spend enough time throwing weights around.
So I tell him to be careful not to bite off more than he chew unless he is prepared to deal with the consequences.
And sometimes those words echo inside my head and I remember the days when I bit off more than I could chew and how I hated losing.
But it fueled my fire and it wasn’t uncommon for me to go back to try again because I knew sooner or later I would win.
Most of the time I did, but not every time and there were enough losses for me to learn to be more judicious in my approach.
It was a good learning experience and the knowledge gained from that is what I am trying to pass along here.
There is no substitute for life experience.
