Mom's Gonna kill you.

This is the first post, and possibly the first mention that I have made about Moms.  Needless to say, I am thinking about the topic because of the pending holiday.

I am not going to give you any of our usual cliches.  I am not going to drool out some crap about i love you mom, (which i do) or any of that other predictable crap.  SO here goes an ode to moms everywhere.  Especially Bonnie, Stacy, Diane, Betty, Jenn, June, Louise, Dayna, Laura, Jody and Greta.

There are two holidays that recognize parents.  We somehow hold mothers day in higher esteem than the other one.  I think that it is for good reason. Although i am not trying to make a comparison between moms and dads, I do think that it goes without saying that Mothers day is definitely the more important holiday. 

Why? Because you never really know what your Dad is going to do.  He might kick your ass; But your mom is going to kill you.   Dads have always been the first parent to hear you swear.  See you smoke.  Catch you beating on his truck.  And they also have always been the ones who said they would not tell mom.  That's because they love you.  And they know mom is gonna kill you.

See this goes both ways.  How many Dads have told their kids not to tell mom?  Um Yeah.  All of them.  How many Moms have said don't tell dad?  not all of them anyway.  Dads and kids have a trust that moms and kids don't always have.  Because mom's gonna kill you.

This is really a compliment to mom by the way.  Mom is burdened by the fact that she usually is the moral compass to her household.  Dad has the luxury of knowing that he's just a big kid anyway, and everybody sort of expects him to act like it.  Take the following quiz if you don't believe me. The answer to each question is either Mom or Dad.

1.  Who encouraged you to go to church more often?
2. Who Taught you to bait a fish-hook?
3. Who checked your homework, and who just asked if it was done?
4. Who did you spend more time playing video games with?
5. Who read to you more?
6. Who taught you how to match your clothes?
7. Who helped you with a band-aid, and who told you to wipe some dirt on it?

you get the idea.  Dads spend time with us with the idea of making Men out of us.  Mom's spend time making Citizens out of us.  Not that one is more important than the other, but society could survive without Mans Men.  Is the same true of Citizens? Imagine the things people wouldn't know how to do without moms. 

Further, Mom was a lot more adamant about it.  Mom would wear herself out trying to mold us into good people.  Nothing was more important to Mom than the development of her children.  Our grades.  our future.  We never worried about Dad's opinion of people we dated.  We never called Dad when we had a personal problem.  We called Dad when the car wouldn't start. 

That's the thing.  We always knew dad was our friend.  We always knew Dad loved us. Dad would help us.  Dad had our back. 

But Mom.  Mom expected a lot more of us.  And Mom was tough.  Dad would laugh and give us a Hug.  Mom would kill us.  you never heard a Dad say "I brought you into this world..."

Our Moms didn't only want the best for us.  They expected that we listen to them about it.  If your Mom didn't approve, you knew it.  Sometimes Dad had to come talk to you about it, but you knew where it came from.  This is the great thing about having parents.  Parents can work together this way.  There are usually not two bad guys.  Parents sometimes take turns..  One can Nurture.  The other can Discipline.  By the way, neither really works without the other, and yes, the roles do switch from time to time. 

But this is about Mom.

We love our moms for all that they have done for us.  We love our moms for unconditional love.  We love our moms for the effort they have put into taking care of us. Teaching us. Spending the time we needed.  Making us do things we didn't want to . And all of the other things Mom does that help us to be who we are today. 

SO i encourage you.  Make a big deal of Mothers day next month. I'm giving you plenty of warning.  And remember, if you don't, Mom's gonna Kill you.

happy Mothers Day ladies.
Greg

A Thank You,

John Kupsh

A&J Vans

April 20, 2011

John,

On my drive home tonight, I got to thinking about my new position.  Reflecting on the things that I find myself involved in a day, and the reasons why I have those responsibilities; I decided that I needed to write down some of my thoughts.

I was in your employ for roughly 9 years.  I realize now how truly young and inexperienced I was when you hired me.  And I find myself thinking about some of the things that I was blessed to have learned during that time.

I guess this is a thank you letter.  Once in a while, we all need to be recognized for what we do for people.  For that reason, I want to recognize you for the mentor that you have truly been to me.  During my friendship with you, you have been a constant source of insight into how business needs to be done.  You were willing to take the time and effort to make me a better business person, in all aspects of the phrase.

Just a brief list of the skills that you tried to endow me with, and coach, and provide feedback on.  Organization. Focus. Drive and Ambition. Competition. Marketing. Advertising. Customer Service. Public Relations. Negotiation. Human Resources. Accounting. Budget Management. Housekeeping. Merchandising. Product Design. Product and Workplace Ergonomics. Continual Improvement. Coaching. Mentoring. And most importantly Leadership.

All of these skills are things that I now find myself with some level of ability that is far and beyond what it was when I started working for you. And I believe that you deserve a fair amount of the credit for that.  I now realize the effort you put in on a constant and consistent basis to attempt this level of mentorship to your people. 

I used to say that I didn’t really have a job description.  My normal comment was that if we didn’t know whose job it was, it was probably mine.  When I think of the breadth of my duties with A&J, I even sometimes wonder how it all got done. It was sometimes overwhelming.  I notice now however that I find myself taking responsibility for things that are beyond the scope of this new position based only on the need for those things to happen.  Seems like that word, responsibility, may be the biggest thing that you managed to instill in my workplace persona.

I don’t know if anybody has ever thanked you in writing before.  I somehow doubt it. Even as I attempt to do so it seems out of place. It is not part of our normal employment cycle. Nonetheless, Thank You.  Although I do feel that the time was right for me to move on, I also feel that my time with you has been absolutely crucial to the future of my career.  I wish you, and A&J, all the best in the future.

                                                                                                            Sincerely,

                                                                                                            Greg M. Wilker

toys

Yes. It's spring again.  In my neck of the woods, thats what we call our area here, we got a brief taste of warm weather over the weekend.  I had the good fortune to have taken a 3 day weekend.  Which of course meant that I was drooling over the chance at getting out some of my warm weather toys. 

So I did.  I drained the crappy fuel out of the moped, and rode that around some. And then the hot rod. I discovered quickly that the battery from the last 4 or so years was junk, and stole the one from my car for the weekend. The old worn out engine in the truck started right up. So I drove that around the village a bit, and then out to the Iowan's new house to work with him a while.

And then it was time to drop the engine from the boat into a barrel of water and get it running.  you get the idea.

Every year, when spring comes, it is the same for me.  I love the excitement of escaping the winter doldrums.  I love walking out to the barn and looking at the warm weather toys.  The anticipation is intense.

But what I like most about spring is the toys.  It seems as though it takes me an entire saturday each fall to winterize the toys.  A bottle or two of stabil, Pull out the batteries, cover them up, Drain the water and refill with antifreeze.  It is a lot of work. 

But each spring, with each ignition of each engine.  That boring day of winterizing just floats away.  I look forward to my boys sitting in the back of the Hot Rod eating ice cream.  Loading the boat for a few hours of slaying bluegills.  Racing around on the four wheeler.   The days of summer are truly my favorite.

What escapes me though is the why.  How come I like those times the best?  Why is it that most of the truly good pictures I have of my kids and my friends were taken indoors? If my favorite moments are spent outdoors playing with things that burn gas, Why dont I capture those more often? 

I think that it has something to do with the moment. When I am playing with my toys, I get caught up in the moment.  I dont think to preserve it.  I dont worry about remembering it later.  I just enjoy the moment.  I tell so many stories about stuff my boys did, or things they said, but never seem to capture it for others to see.

What is funny about that is the polarity it seems to emphasize with what my own parents did. 

I have a smart-phone.  Where i used to carry a camera, a camcorder, a navigation device, and all of those other things, my cellphone now does all of them better and faster by itself. Which means that I can document a lot of things with my phone much faster than I used to be able to do.  But I dont.

15 or 25 years ago my parents had a polaroid.  And they have albums full of pictures of things that I may never have pictures of my own kids doing. 

What I think has happened is that we have gotten very used to having the ability.  We have forgotten the wealth of technology that is literally at our fingertips, and have begun to take it for granted.

When I was a kid, it was work to take a picture. To do so meant something was a special event, and you had to carry an additional device to embed it into your history.  Today, all you have to do to save that event is grab the phone in your pocket and take a high-res video of it.  Sometimes when things are that easy, I dont think that we hold them to the same level of importance.

So I challenge you tonight. As spring dawns. As you begin to leave the house.  And play with your warm weather toys.  Take the time to think about what makes them great.  Take a few pictures or videos.  Do a little journal keeping.  Maybe you'll have something to look forward to while the snowflakes fall.