There are a lot of things that are right with this video… from the dreams and passions of young Caine to his father creating and fostering that environment to Nirvan being the first customer to the climax, where he coordinates the flash mob.
This restores my hope in humanity. 9-year-old’s DIY cardboard arcade gets flashmobbed
Original blog post here, full video below 
A few days ago I was talking to my seven year old daughter, telling her the story of a time when I could have died. (she likes the story, and requests it often)
She said, “wow Dad, I’m glad you didn’t die. If you died, we wouldn’t be here!”
I said, “yeah, mom would have married someone rich, handsome and a good singer!”
She says, “DAD! You are that!”
“I’m what?” I ask…
Her reply: “You are rich! You own your own company!”
Yes I am. Very rich
My five year old daughter couldn’t stop singing this phrase over the weekend:
I KNOW A SONG THAT GETS ON EVERYBODY’S … NOSE, EVERYBODY’S NOSE, EVERYBODY’S NOSE!
How cute is that?
She also calls an ear worm a “head worm.”
Why?
One day a great song came on the radio (I don’t know which one) and she said “TURN IT! TURN IT! That song gets stuck in my head!”
I said “oh, that’s called an ear worm… when you can’t get it out ”
Taking one word from her description and one word from my description, she said, “I don’t want a HEAD WORM.”
Love it
The last few days we had some painters in our home, painting a lot of stuff. What I thought would take me a few days of after-work hours turned into more than 50 man-hours for these professionals.
Since they were in our home for so long they got to know our family a bit. We shared meals with them and talked quite a bit. It was fun.
Last night was the last night they were in our house. Before they left, the owner of the company expressed his thoughts about our kids, our family and our home. He was very impressed with our family, and our kids. More impressed, perhaps, than we were. It’s so easy for us, as parents, to lose sight of any success we have as parents, and then an angel comes along and subtly (or not-so-subtly) reminds us that we are indeed doing a good job.
As I went to bed I thought of an analogy… this is the first draft, which will probably go nowhere, but if I make time, one day I could see storyboarding it to become a kids book (or a parents book, written like a kids book). Enjoy:
There was a certain peach tree people would walk by and admire. The peaches were beautiful, they were ripe. The travelers took the peaches and ate them, and remarked how amazing they were.
Everyone who walked past the tree could see the beauty and taste of the flavor, and all were greatly impressed.
The tree, however, didn’t recognize the depth of the beauty, and couldn’t appreciate the height of the flavor.
The tree was busy focusing on pulling nutrition from the ground through its roots. It focused on the underground, unseen, dirty and usually unappreciated work of finding nutrition. There is nothing glamorous about this work. No one walks by a tree and says
“wow, those roots underground must be amazing, and healthy, and doing the right thing. I think these must be the best roots around.”Above ground, the tree was busy focusing on simply staying alive – getting nutrition up the trunk to each branch. The tree worked to have leaves which could pull nutrition from the sun. In early spring it showed blossoms, but those mostly needed nutrition and didn’t provide anything (except beauty) to the tree. The tree worked hard to keep the blossoms healthy.
As time passed, the blossoms became more demanding, even weighing down the branches, as they developed into peaches.
The peaches demanded more and more nutrition, and became heavier, and the tree continued to provide nourishment. It was too busy doing what it was meant to do that it didn’t recognize the beauty of the changes – from nothing to blossom to fruitling, on its path to a nourishing fruit. From green to the beautiful red and orange colors of the peach.
The tree continued on, as it always had. Get nutrition from leaves. Get nutrition from the ground. Ignore pesky bugs, which the tree couldn’t do anything about. Do the job at hand.
While this was happening, travelers saw a tree, with brown branches and bark, rich green leaves, and commented how beautiful the peaches were. They could see the beauty. They appreciated the beauty. They knew that in a short time, the peaches would be ripe and delicious.
When the day came, people picked the peaches, and enjoyed them, and shared them. They loved them, and were happy with the tree, and were grateful that the tree would produce for years to come.
Isn’t this the way it is with us, many times, as parents?
How many of us have gotten comments about our children – how cute they are, how well-behaved they are, how fun they are, how special they are, etc. We all get slightly different comments. Sometimes we think “yeah, but you don’t see them fight at bath time,” or “yeah, but you should try getting them down to bed,” or “yeah, but _______.”
We act like the tree… focusing on the dirt and the labor. We need to – that is our role as parents. Hopefully we can also see and appreciate what others see so quickly – the beauty that comes from the labor.
These, our children, are the fruits of our labor. The fruits show that the labor was good and the system was healthy. Even though we see dirt, and where we work is sometimes dark, and we are busy giving of our time and energy, and we feel tired, and sometimes we don’t see the changes, we must recognize the beauty. We must realize we had an important part to play in it.
Rough draft, but cool concept. Thoughts? I had a bunch of follow-up thoughts (where the analogy could go), which I’ll try to capture in the comments below.
On our road trip we stayed with family in Midland, Texas. When I was a kid I caught some horned toads (aka, horny toads, which are some of the coolest lizards in the world) there, and have fond memories of hunting for stuff.
My son, about the age I was when we was there last, regularly went out to the yard to see what he could find. We were told the corner of the 1/2 acre, with a wood pile, was the best place to look for critters.
One morning William ran in, barely able to speak/yell, but it was clear we had to run out to see what he found… a freaking awesome wild tarantula!
Why aren’t we lucky enough to get this stuff in our yard in Utah? Dangit.
Anyway, we took a few pictures… this is my favorite… I kept saying “put your hand closer… closer, closer…” until he finally said, with anxiety, “DAD!” Like, “DAD, you are freaking crazy! I like animals, but I don’t like posing like this!”
Nonetheless, the picture turned out great, don’t you think?
Kid1: “hey, respect your elders, yo!”
Kid 2: “But I’m older than you…!
Kid 1: “Yeah, but I’m your UNCLE!”
… good point, I guess :p
Today I started piano lessons with my 13 year old daughter.
That is, SHE is teaching me.
Considering she’s been playing since she was 3 (see a cool song she self-taught herself below), I figured she’d be an excellent teacher. Plus, I’d like to see if she likes it and would teach other young kids and make a buck here or there.
It went well, although my fingers and hands don’t really want to do what they must. Piano isn’t as much about learning what sound each key makes as it is figuring out how to control the movements of my body, and retrain my movements.
The sound I’m plucking right now are very simple, but if I can get the form down I’ll be able to move into other, complex, more beautiful music.
Just like earlier this morning when I took her to the raquetball court. She wants to hit with her wrist, and she wants to hit overhead, and she wants to have her body point in the wrong direction on a hit, and she wants to—— use bad form. Because it’s more natural.
But she’s learning good form, and as she masters the good form, and her muscles strengthen, and she gets more control, she’ll be able to play at a higher level.
Just like her mom, who started to write songs many, many years ago, but a few months ago she started to go to local songwriter meetings to learn how to write songs – what is a bridge, what is a hook, how to use twists, how to relate to the audience, etc.
She has dozens of songs started, but some of them are probably pretty sophomoric, because she didn’t have the training. But she’s getting the training, and she’s practicing – in the mornings she pulls out a notebook while her mind is fresh and she writes for ten minutes. She is reading books on lyrics. I’m sure she’s already improved, and over time her songwriting will only mature.
Just like blogging – when I started blogging I thought I was freaking awesome, but I’m coming up on my five year anniversary and I know my blog posts have gotten better. I didn’t go to blogging school, but I have been at it, writing almost 2,000 posts in the last five years. I’m experimented, played, tried and just plain written, and I can only hope that my posts are more meaningful, more impactful, and just plain better.
So, could the formula for getting proficient at something be:
proper instruction + plenty of practice = profiency
?
About Sam – she’s really good. She self-taught herself to play this song (we need to get a recording up on youtube):
Almost five years ago I got laid off. My wife was pregnant with our fourth child and we had to change from our car (Toyota Avalon, which is like harnessing heaven on four wheels!) to a minivan.
It was hard to give up the Avalon but the story of how we got our van is a very cool story, and why we call it The Miracle Van. Even with it’s bumps and bruises, we really appreciated the van because we got it in a time of desperation, and it represented the goodness of humanity (many people where involved in helping us get it, since there was no money to pay for it at the time).
Two weeks ago I had just started a two week trip with about a dozen speaking engagements. I was in California at the time when I got the dreaded call from my FIL:
“First, everyone is okay….”
When he said that I thought ... “okay, I think that’s not the statement I want to hear when I first answer the phone… is he going to tell me something bad happened?”
My wife was in an accident that could have been very, very bad, but fortunately she, and our two youngest kids, where okay.
An accident is not good for anyone… but events leading up to this accident where, as we recognized, tender mercies.
For example:
In memoriam, here’s a picture of the van, post-accident… note the numbers (explanations below):
Shopping for a new vehicle isn’t fun, in general, but we’ve had some great experiences, which I hope to blog about on the JibberJobber blog.
Last week I was swimming with my kids and my three-almost-four year old had this very concerned look, and in a voice worthy of pity and sadness, she said:
“aaaaaaaw, look at that water down there,” as she points down to the bottom of the pool, with serious concern, “it’s drowning
.”
In all my years I’ve never thought about the water on the bottom, drowning. How ignorant of me :p
Today was an interesting walk. I walked 6.3 miles, which is the most I can stand to do since my boss doesn’t like me to take 2 hour lunch breaks :p
About 3 miles into it a neighbor who knows what my goal is honked like a crazy woman and then pulled up beside me and yelled encouragement… thumbs up and everything. That was pretty cool (thank you ).
Then, about a half mile up the road I was at an intersection waiting to cross when an older guy (about 60), pushing a stroller with a baby, came up to me and said “I walked every day for an hour, cut 1/2 of what I ate and cut out the soda and I lost 23 pounds! Don’t give up!”
That was really nice of him to share. Of course it reminded me that even though I feel 100 times better, I still look like I need to lose 23 pounds :p
Here’s my favorite story, though. This happened 8 days ago. I was with my 9 year old son (the romantic one LOL). He is a very active kid but this winter he hasn’t been so active… so he would ride his bike ahead of me just so he could take a lot of rests.
When we were about 3.5 miles into the walk, which was about .5 miles from our house, I told him I was going to pass our house and walk another 2.3 miles. I knew he was exhausted and really just wanted to get a reaction out of him.
He said, with a really calm face, “that’s okay.” — no discouragement at all.
I said “really?”
He replied, and this was the BEST part: “sure Dad, I don’t care. I just want to make sure you hit your goal.”
He was thinking of ME hitting MY goal. What an awesome 9 year old!
It was a very tender moment – I sure love my kids!
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