Screaming Children Don't Belong at Nice Restaurants

Three things you should never do at a nice restaurant:

(1) use your hands to consume your meal;
(2) put your elbows on the table;
(3) bring your screaming, ill-behaved small child along with you. 

I actually don't care about the first two.  You can lick your fingers all you want, as long as I'm not sitting at your table. And I've never understood the point of the elbows thing.  But I draw the line at number three.

No one should ever bring an emotionally unstable small child to a non-private room in what is otherwise a quiet, upscale restaurant. Your two-year-old's presence at your upscale meal isn't going to enhance your dining experience. And there's a better than average chance it will ruin everyone else's.  Even if your kid isn't screaming when you get there, it was just a matter of time. 

Here's a tip:  if you have an emotionally volatile child, you are probably used to his or her epic meltdowns by this point.  Everyone else in the restaurant, however, is not. 

Proceed accordingly.

Before I offend everyone in cyberspace who has ever been the parent of a small child, let me clarify.  I'm not complaining about parents who take a small child to Outback, Red Lobster, or some other casual, family-style restaurant. I'm not even talking about the parents who take their small child to a Sunday brunch buffet at a fancy restaurant.

Nor am I complaining about the family who reserves a private room or large table for a family event at a really nice place, where the noise of the gathering is likely already high, and having the whole family together is the purpose of the occasion. 

I'm talking about the people who take their rambunctious munchkin with them on a Friday or Saturday night to a restaurant where practically everyone else there is either on a special-occasion date or important business venture.

These are, without fail, the same people who, once there, ignore both their children's cries and the dirty looks of those around them.  These are the families who haven't taught their children the difference between appropriate behavior in a restaurant with tableclothes and McDonald's Playland. 

I'm talking about people who just don't care. If you have enough self-awareness to wonder if any of the above applies to you, then by definition, it probably doesn't. 

So who am I talking about?  The family I encountered last weekend, for one.

It was then that Liz and I had our long-overdue celebratory dinner for selling our former house last month. We went to the semi-famous Sunset Grill--one of the nicest places in town.  It's a Nashville institution, the preferred destination of music industry power lunches and an occasional hangout of the stars. 

We only go out to a nice dinner about once every three months, so we were thrilled at the opportunity. 

But when we got there, what happened "down at the Sunset Grill," would have shocked even Don Henley.

A family, dressed as though they were attending a baseball game, was seated at the far end of the restaurant with a 6ish-year-old child, who was too old to be screaming his lungs out in public, but too young for his family to expect him to appreciate dining at one of the nicest restaurants in a major metropolitan city.

How a frumpily dressed family wearing jeans and baseball ended up at one of the nicest restaurants in town, small child in tow, is a mystery. Sunset Grill is in a neighborhood full of casual eateries befitting a family-style meal, so it's not like they were a group of hungry tourists desperate for whatever dining option they could find.  Instead, this family just chose to go to one of the nicest restaurants in town but to neither dress up, find a babysitter, nor attempt to control a screaming child while there.

Perhaps the group got lost on their way to Wal-Mart and decided to stop in the first place they saw.

Anyway, the fun began a few minutes after we were seated, when we heard the child yelling from across the restaurant, for no reason in particular. Sometimes he yelled specific requests, sometimes he yelled inaudible noises just for the sake of doing so.  His parents and grandparents mostly just ignored him, occasionally responding casually to his demonic whining.   

Our attempts to ignore him failed when we found ourselves unable to complete a sentence without hearing a cross-restaurant demand for a cheeseburger.  Or a coloring book.  Or to simply be the focus of attention.  Of the entire restaurant. Meanwhile, his parents chirped away pleasantly, making no attempt to quiet the hellboy down. 

A few minutes later, hellboy was rolling around the floor, as the words "I want chocolate" rang out.  His party seemed to think the spectacle was cute. 

And soon thereafter, much to the chagrin of everyone else in the restaurant, they ordered dessert. 

The parents must have known their child did not have the maturity to endure a long dinner. The rest of the restaurant seemed to figure it out pretty quickly.

Our waitress shrugged at us apologetically, but the boy's parents just didn't care. 

We had our quarterly fancy meal, and all I really remember from it is the child from the underworld who wouldn't shut up. 

This wasn't the first time we've had a nice dinner ruined by parents who thought their lack of a babysitter outweighed the dining pleasure of the rest of the restaurant.  We once had another meal where a newborn at a $30 a plate eatery commandeered the attention of the entire upstairs of the restaurant, while the parents (also dressed in jeans and baseball caps) obliviously chatted with their friends. 

I guess some people just don't care.

If you are one of these people, I have news for you:

The married couple paying who actually hired a babysitter and is paying $100 on top of that to have a romantic meal out does not find their experience enhanced by a soundtrack of your child's shrieks.

While a couple on a first date might have a lull in their conversation, they don't want their silence filled by your four-year-old's deafening pleas for French fries.

The candidate on her job interview might need a moment to find the right answer to a tricky question, but it shouldn't be because she can't hear herself think due to the constant cacophony coming from your table.

I understand that all parents need a night out sometimes.  I get that some people can't afford babysitters or don't have access to one who is reliable. It's predictable that parents become immune to the histrionics of their own children after awhile. But being a parent in one of those situations doesn't provide you the right to ruin other people's special occasions. 

If you don't have access to a babysitter, but decide to go out, then go somewhere casual, at least until your child is old enough to behave appropriately.  Use the money you save to hire a babysitter next time.  If all else fails, and you simply must go somewhere nice, go out on a weeknight, when your child's tortured wailing is more likely to interrupt co-workers blowing off steam than couples celebrating important milestones.

If you somehow find yourself unavoidably in a nice restaurant with a small child, stay observant as to whether your child is behaving appropriately, and whether anyone else seems to be annoyed.   

You might think your child's restaurant rampage is an adorable show, but no one else is amused.

And if you don't care about that, you should. 


 

Tomorrow

I usually post new material on Tuesday, but it just isn't going to happen this week. 

Two straight long days at work, combined with a night of fitful sleep last night have turned me into a walking zombie (except that I'm actually sitting on the couch rather than walking).

I function normally on 7-8 hours of sleep. I can power through if I get 4 or 5. But, for some reason, if I get 6, which is about what I got last night, the whole day is an uphill struggle.

I managed to write a rough draft of something earlier, but it needs some more TLC before it's ready to go.  I don't have the energy to do it now.  And I still might decide it sucks and ditch it entirely.  I got a better idea for a column just a few minutes ago, but the idea of starting something from scratch right now makes me want to cry.

One way or the other, I'll have something new posted here tomorrow night.

I'll see you then.

The True Story of My Fake Online Girlfriend

Unless your head has been buried in the sand (which raises the question of how you are reading this blog), you've by now heard the story of Manti Te'o, the Notre Dame football player who spent all season talking about his car-crash surviving, cancer-fighting girlfriend who didn't actually exist. 

The details continue to emerge, but apparently Te'o either fabricated the whole story, or he was the victim of a cruel online hoax.  The hoax story seems far-fetched.  Who would be dumb enough to correspond for months with an online love interest who didn't actually exist? 

Funny that you ask.  A similar thing once happened to me.

When I was in college at the University of Alabama, I got an email from someone who introduced herself as "Courtney."  She claimed to be a high school senior and prospective student, and she said she found my email address from the online college email directory.  I didn't know UA had an online directory (this was 1997), but the story seemed plausible, and her email address' prefix of "heartbreaker999" (exact details changed to prevent litigation) caught my attention. 

I wrote her back.  We talked about life at UA, and our respective biographies and pretty soon, our emails took on a flirty tone.  I hadn't seen her, but she described herself as a 5'4'' blond tennis player cheerleader, and she was a good online conversationalist.  After about a month, her emails were consistently the highlight of my day. 

But soon, things started getting weird.  I sent her a picture, but she wouldn't reciprocate.  Her biography matched up strikingly well with the girl I had intermittently dated throughout high school.  In fact, Courtney had been the name of that girl's sister.  "Courtney's" alleged middle name was the same as the first name of my pseudo-ex's mom.  And "Courtney's" last name was the same as that of our high school tennis coach.  Like "Courtney," the recipient of my high school interest had been a cheerleader and tennis player and was a 5'4" blond. 

I struck it all up to coincidence at first. But when "Courtney" started asking questions about my high school love life that seemed suspiciously well-tailored to past events, I began to smell something fishy.  That suspicion was furthered when I confirmed that Alabama didn't actually have an online student email directory, which was how "Courtney" said she had found me.

While I sensed a hoax, I still wasn't sure who was behind it. I kept emailing "Courtney" in hopes of uncovering details without sucess. But "Courtney's" warmth began to recede when I suggested we talk on the phone.  When she finally agreed to talk, she insisted on calling me, wouldn't give me her number, and sounded nervous (and much older than an 18-year-old high school student) on the phone. 

The call made me even more sure I was being "catfished."  But I didn't recognize the voice, and wasn't sure who was behind it, or why.  My initial suspicion turned to the former love interest whose life "Courtney" had transplanted as her own.

But she seemed way too smart for such a transparent duplication of herself, and I couldn't imagine why she would think it necessary. I had generally been the pursuer in our tortured off-and-on dynamic, so she probably would have felt comfortable calling directly if she wanted to reconnect.

I called her just in case.  While she seemed happy to hear from me, it was clear from her trademark emotionless and rational manner that she wasn't exactly missing me and had nothing to do with whoever was using her biography. 

Whoever was behind the scam, though, was someone who at least had access to someone close to me.  She somehow had my newly created email address (which in 1997, was no small detail), and the questions she asked about where things went wrong in my high school experiences betrayed someone with intricate knowledge of my life and relationship history.     

I knew only one person weird enough to construct this kind of mirage, but for various reasons, the math didn't add up for her to be behind it.  I had no other ideas, so I tried to trick "Courtney" into giving herself away.

I formulated a deliciously elaborate plan to trick Courtney into revealing herself, but it backfired and instead just gave away that I was onto the scam.  "Courtney" then disappeared, with a sudden declaration that she had reversed course and decided to go to Southern Mississippi. 

Confused and hopeless, I gave up the investigation and moved on with life.

Years later, with the benefit of a law school education, the whole mystery suddenly snapped into place on an idle Tuesday when I was at the gym. 

I had dated a girl once or twice in high school.  On paper, we seemed reasonably compatible, but the timing of our interaction doomed it from the start.  I had lost touch with her after high school, but she had a reasonable path through which she could have gotten my email address. She had a means of knowing enough information about the girl she was impersonating to adopt her biography, and we had enough mutual connections that she might have heard some details over where things went wrong. She even had an older sister I didn't know who might have been the person I spoke to on the phone that night. 

I had a suspect in mind who could have performed the scam. But why?  

"Courtney's" alter ego was dating someone during the time she was writing me. She used the fake identity, for the sake of asking about the state of my feelings without risking her current relationship if I wasn't interested.  She asked so many questions about my former love life in hopes that I might utter her alter ego's name.

It was a weird plan, that seems, in retrospect, highly unlikely to work. But anyone who would invest an online personna to correspond with someone they had dated once or twice years earlier probably wasn't capable of a plan that sounded rational.

And when I didn't appropriately respond, "Courtney" faded away, and eventually married the guy she had been dating.

I didn't put all the dots together until years after the events occurred, so I never got to confront "Courtney" with the revelation of my discovery. 

So, "Courtney," if you are reading this (which I assume you are, given your tendency toward online stalking), consider yourself busted.  I won't reveal your name here because I don't want to embarrass you (or get sued), but I hope you are happy in your current relationship. 

And if you aren't, well, please write someone else this time. 

Death Star, Trillion Dollar Coin Failures Show Washington is Broken

It's official: Washington is the place where good ideas go to die.

The first of the two most recent examples occurred yesterday when the White House denied an online petition, signed by more than 25,000 people, to build America's own version of the Death Star, the planet-sized Starship of Destruction that the Empire used in the Star Wars movies.

The government's official response denying the petition is here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking

I don't like to talk politics in this, um, Space, but some decisions are so incomprehensible they simply must be addressed. 

America is facing a stubborn eight percent unemployment rate. Perceptions of the country's direction are near an all-time low, as are Americans' perception of their government.  The public is increasingly divided, as Fox News and MSNBC convince their respective partisan audiences that the other party is Evil Incarnate. 

Amidst this divided backdrop, an overwhelming mass of the public agreed on one fundamental proposition: We the People need a Death Star. 

And the administration said no. 

The official reasons were that a Death Star is too expensive, that we have no actual desire to blow up other planets, and that the vessel has a design flaw that can be exploited by one renegade starship, which can cause immediate explosion. 

These petty concerns are beside the point. 

The construction of the Death Star would provide jobs, both in the construction and storm trooper industries.  The storm troopers jobs, to be filled by applicants unable to hit various human, robotic and Wookie targets at point-blank range, would also provide employment for individuals who, let's face it, probably couldn't get a job anywhere else.  And the fashion industry would get a boost too, as various designers competed for government contracts to produce the chicest possible Storm Trooper designs. 

It's a win-win for the entire employment sector.  The job gains from this project would provide a boost to the economy sufficient to offset any initial cost. 

The boost to the national morale the presence of a Death Star would provide, or the fear it would put into our enemies, also cannot be overstated.  Would Iran continue with its nuclear program if we parked the Death Star on the Iraqi Border? And so what if we lose in the World Cup?  We have an f'ing Death Star. 

Critics suggest that the we don't actually need a Death Star, because we have no known extra terrestrial enemies.  The key word in that sentence, however, is known.  If we ever do meet visitors from neighboring galaxies, they are much more likely to be polite if we have the ability to destroy them on a whim.  Besides, we'd be at a significant disadvantage, and feel more than a little bit silly, if we don't build a Death Star, and our alien visitors already have one. 

It would be prudent be prepared for this possibility.

As to the complaint that the Death Star has proven vulnerable to one-man starships, this argument presumes that our attacking Intergalactic foe has seen Star Wars.  We need not worry about this. 

If any competing civilization started watching Star Wars at Episode I, they probably didn't make it to the end.  Besides, when is the last time you saw a one-man starship floating around?  This fear is unrealistic.

Still, the demise of the Death Star, was not the only bad news of the week.  The government, on the very same day, decided against minting a one trillion dollar platinum coin.

The background behind this issue is straightforward.  The government, like Enron and the Hostess Company, spends more money than it makes, and it's getting near the limit of what it can legally borrow.  While the two most obvious solutions to this problem would be to either balance the budget or raise the legal borrowing limit, but both of those measures have the downside of requiring Congress to actually do something. As a result, neither seems likely to happen.

Instead, it was suggested, the Treasury Department could simply create a $1 trillion coin, deposit it in the Federal Bank Account, and the government suddenly would have a trillion dollars with which to pay its bills.

It sounds simple enough, but this possibility raised important and serious legal questions.  For instance:

Whose face would be on this thing?"

Could the coin be used to fund the construction of the Death Star?

How would someone get change if they used the trillion dollar coin to buy a pack of gum?

The government had no answers for these questions, so the idea died this week.  My answers would have been: (1) Montgomery Burns; (2) YES!; and (3) Store Credit, but no one asked me, despite the fact that: (1) Our First Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton is my ancestor, and (2) I have a blog read by at least 30 people last week. (If you count my cat as person. Twice.)

So instead of a quick fix to our nation's debt crisis, we'll have to wait with anxious breath as our self-serving, short-sighted, hyper-partisan politicians attempt to forge a bipartisan solution. 

I just can't help but think I'd have more faith in Congress' ability to make that deal if the Death Star was pointed menacingly toward Capitol Hill. 

Driving through the Wilderness

Here's some travel advice: never leave for an 11-hour road trip unless you have some basic idea where you are going. 

If that tip seems mind-numbingly obvious to you, then, well, I wish you would have been in the car with me the last time I drove from Nashville to Washington, DC.

We were set to embark at 7:00 a.m., but due to the breakneck pace at which I tend to live my life, I didn't even have a chance to start packing until 11:00 the night before.

My cross-country flight connected through Dallas, where my connection home got cancelled.  I raced to a distant terminal of America's most poorly organized airport in a failed attempt to catch an earlier flight, which I ultimately missed by just four minutes, because I had to go through a long security line when I switched terminals. Then I had to return back from where I started (passing through security yet again) to sit around and wait for a later flight that barely got me home that night at all. 

When it did, I was shuttled to the airport parking lot in the driving rain and dropped off in the downpour only to find that I had forgotten where I had parked.  (Answer: nowhere near where I was dropped off).

Once I got home, in my exhausted state (Tennessee), I was so focused on packing what I would need once I reached my next destination that it never crossed my mind to figure out how to actually get there. There's probably a metaphor in that somewhere, but I certainly didn't have the mental energy to think about it then.

I might have thought of it the next morning, but my wife and I overslept and had to scamper to load the car and get moving in order to get there before it got too late. We hit the road, and about three hours into the trip, when we hit the intersection of I-75 and I-40 in Knoxville, that it occurred to me that I had no earthly idea how to get to Virginia, and that while I-40 would eventually get me to North Carolina, the two states were not, technically speaking, the same.

Although perhaps they should be.

My brief panic subsided when our portable GPS happened to be in the car we were driving. I don't like helplessly relying on those things, but the alternative was stopping and buying an atlas, which would have cost money, made me feel silly, and further delayed our arrival.

Besides, we were making seriously good time, which as most guys know, is the most important thing about a road trip.

So we pressed on.  I-40 took us to I-81, which took us to Virginia where we passed a house with a confederate flag and a functional-looking cannon sitting in the front yard, pointing at the interstate.  If the Civil War ever resumes, and the Yanks come marching down I-81, at least one house will be prepared. 

We pressed on, anxious to get out of whatever weird subcultural domain we'd entered.  Before long we were in Central Virginia and according to our GPS, about 2 hours outside of the DC suburbs where we were headed. We were on pace to hit Alexandria in less than 10 hours, which would be the driving achievement of a lifetime. I was pumped.

It was then that things got interesting.

The GPS (We call her "Carmen" because she is a Garmin brand, has a female voice, and lives in the car) inexplicably told me to exit I-81 for another interstate heading toward Richmond, which was 120 miles away.  It didn't sound right to me, but I didn't have a map, so I followed orders.

I was temporarily relieved when Carmen told me to get off the interstate again in after a few miles. It was a small road, and it had just gotten dark outside, but at least she wasn't taking me on a 120-mile detour to Richmond.  We got gas and stopped for a bathroom, which proved to be the only good decision we made that night. 

The people hanging around the rural Virginia gas stop had the look of the cast of Deliverance and gave us suspicious looks as we walked in, but no one physically accosted us, and there was no immediate sign of cannon fire, so we labeled the stop a success. 

When we got back on the road, the lights of the interstate soon faded and it became clear we were on a windy two-lane road in the middle of nowhere with no clear idea of where we were going.  Right around then it occurred to me that a map really might have been a good idea.

At least the road was only 13 miles, and surely we'd hit some better road at the end of that dark and winding stretch.  We were driving a car with a slow oil leak and 185,000 miles on it, but as long as we didn't breakdown, we'd be ok.  Although this detour was surely costing us a lot of time. Carmen now had us getting in at 8:17 instead of 7:58, but there was no driving any faster than 35 on this rural two-lane deathtrap of a road. 

After the requisite 13 miles, we turned onto an equally deserted stretch of two-lane roads that eventually led us to a town, for some reason, called Orange.  It was cute enough, but when we hit its quaint downtown, Carmen instructed us to take the second right at the roundabout. 

We did that and soon thereafter heard: "recalculating."  Meanwhile Carmen had pushed our expected arrival back to 8:30.  We were in trouble. And once we got back on the interstate, I was going to smash Carmen into a thousand pieces in revenge for what she was doing to me.

We followed Carmen's instructions through another windy two-lane road in the dark night, only this one seemed to go straight up into a mountain.   The thick trees beside the road absorbed any hint of moonlight, and the constant 45-degree turns on the narrow highway kept me on the edge of my seat.  As my visibility shrank to about two car lengths, I prayed not to break down or run off the road, and suddenly became thankful we had already stopped for gas.  Meanwhile, our arrival time changed to 8:42.

At some point on the interminable 22-mile road, we crossed a sign that was too dark to read, but seemed to indicate we were somehow in a national park. I said words to Carmen at that moment that can never be taken back--words that will permanently damage our relationship--but they were words that had to be said. 

Our old car kept going, albeit at a very slow pace, given the darkness.  I barely managed to keep it on the winding, unlit road as the exhaustion of the day's drive set it.  The narrow mountain road had no shoulder, and with the fleeting amount of light drifting through the trees, I was sure we'd get rear-ended if the car ran into trouble and had to stop for some reason. 

My wife, meanwhile, notice that our arrival time had once again been pushed back, gave up her fleeting hopes of a nice dinner and made a peanut butter sandwich.  The only bright side was that the thick forest of trees beside the road protected us from any potential cannon fire.

As we neared the exit to this still unnamed national park, we saw the first road sign we'd seen since we got off the interstate.  Surely, this was our ray of hope, and civilization was near.  The long, harrowing journey through nothingness was about to end.  

The sign read:

"Wilderness: 8 miles."

We were stunned.

I stammered: "You mean there's an actual place called Wilderness?  And this isn't it?"  

Indeed, someone had looked at the deserted place we were in, and the place we were headed, and thought the spot eight miles ahead looked more like "Wilderness" than the land that became the national park.  And that was exactly where we were headed.

Through more twists and turns mixed in equal parts with prayers and curses at Carmen, we managed to make it to Wilderness.  To our mild surprise, it looked no more or less like "Wilderness" than anything else we had passed since we made the regrettable decision to leave the interstate.

We saw no indication of civilization there, but then again, I guess that was to be expected.

From there, we made a couple more turns and finally hit I-95 in Fredricksburg, Va, where we would have stopped the car and kissed the 6-lane highway under our tires if our little detour hadn't already added an extra hour to the trip. It was now scheduled to end at 9:02. 

Our literal detour through the Wilderness, from the time we left one interstate to the time we got on another, had taken slightly more than two hours, but it felt like two years. We could barely speak by the time we finished, and more than anything, we happy to be safe and in a car that was still moving. 

After a short trip up I-95, we hit our destination, thanked the Hand of Providence, parked the car and enjoyed our stay.

We had made it in safely, but the detour through the Wilderness cost us an extra hour of travel time, for which I vowed to compensate on the drive back home, when I would use a different route. 

And I would make sure to map it out in advance.  

What I Learned in 2012

Never waste a failure.

-A writer whose name, for the life of me, I can't remember. But I read this quote last year, and it stuck with me. At least the quote did. The author, not so much.  

2012 is over, and thank God for that. 

It was the hardest year of my life, and not just because of all the idiotic facebook rants I encountered during the run-up to the election.  Although that was certainly part of it.  

2012 saw the country face a divisive choice: rehire a President who once promised to stem the ocean's tide but who instead barely managed to keep the government operational, or hire a guy who not-so-secretly hated half the population and never promised, specifically, anything whatsoever.

2012 saw the Mayans proven wrong about the End of Days.  In their defense, however, they correctly predicted the death of Dick Clark, who would no longer be around to usher in 2013.  So they kind of got it right.

2012 marked a summer where high temperatures reached 238 degrees, the debut of Gangnam Style, and a bunch of other stuff I don't remember.  It also featured the London Olympic games that included events such as handball (a game in which a player leaps at full speed into a human wall while attempting to hurl a ball into a guarded net), synchronized cat repelling, and the "modern pentathlon" featuring such "modern" events as steeplechase, fencing and hopscotch. 

Ok, I made one of those events up.  In fact, the modern pentathlon actually includes pistol shooting rather than hopscotch.

Those are the things that might make it into an almanac about the year that just passed.  But the thing is, none of those things are all that important to me. 

Ten years from now, if someone asks me what happened in 2012, I won't remember any of that stuff, except maybe the ridiculousness of watching an event called "modern pentathlon" that contained events outdated by at least a century.

What will I remember?

It is tempting to think that I'll remember that 2012 was the Year of Crap.

In 2012, my brother got cancer. The tenant who lived in my old house in St. Louis reneged on her informal agreement to buy it at the end of her lease term, leaving me with two mortgages and $11,000 in repair bills. A close friend moved away.  Many others let me down.

The church I'd been part of five years didn't practice what it preached.  My little brother in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program stopped returning my calls.  For half the year, I ended up being forced into doing my boss's job responsibilities even though I'd been passed over for the promotion.

I suffered a displaced rib, strep throat, a colonoscopy, four sinus infections, a bulging disk in my back.  My workload exploded beyond what I thought was possible.

Life suddenly seemed harder.  And I haven't even mentioned the things I can't tell you about here.

Those are all things that happened to me in 2012.  But they are not what I'll remember. 

What I'll remember is that this was the year my brother got Stage 3c cancer, but completed a mini-triathlon in protest of his circumstances.  I'll remember that I did it with him, even though I don't own a bike, can barely swim, and had a displaced rib poking into my lung that prevented me from taking deep breaths.  I'll remember that I learned I can accomplish so much more than seems possible if I work consistently at something and refuse to accept defeat. I learned that I can far exceed the limitations I thought I had if only I have the courage to try.

I learned not to dwell on things that don't matter.  My brother has always been one of the most important people in my life, but we let a silly political debate disrupt our relationship not too long before his diagnosis.  If 2012 had been the end of his time on earth, I don't know if I could have forgiven myself for that. So I learned this year that my friends don't have to vote the way I do.  Good people have differing visions as to how to make our country better, and as long as someone is motivated by the right intentions, I don't have to try to agree with what their view of what progress looks like. 

I learned that peace is possible, even in the worst of circumstances, as long as one knows that life's inevitable tragedies are not endured alone. And I learned the importance of reaching out when someone else is in the midst of something difficult. I learned the importance of staying beside those who proved that they care, and the surprising joy of hearing from the people who unexpectedly did.

I also learned:

God doesn't always answer prayers with a "yes" or "no."  Sometimes the answer is just a sense of peace, or a shoulder to cry on, until the answer comes. 

Most of our trying circumstances will eventually pass.  The ones that don't offer the chance to learn something.  Use it.

God has accounted for our own stupidity in drawing up His plan for us.

Don't take anything for granted. Something you love might not be there when you are ready to appreciate it.

If you have three friends who are reliable, and with whom you can talk to about anything, you can consider yourself blessed.  And I'm thankful to have more than that.

If a book isn't interesting by page 50, it's time to move on. No one is handing out medals for finishing bad books.

If you change out of your work clothes as soon as you come home, you'll leave the stress of the work day behind more easily.

You need to say "no" sometimes, even to the people who love you.

You can't please everyone, no matter how hard you try.  But if you get to know yourself well enough to become comfortable in your own skin, you'll please the people who matter most, without really trying.  As Oscar Wilde said, "be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."

There's an inner voice in your soul.  If you don't listen to it now, you'll pay the consequences later.

In a good friendship, both parties' natural tendency is to replenish the other's spirit. Don't maintain a one-sided relationship where the giving only flows in one direction.

Forgive yourself and forgive others. None of us are perfect. But if someone keeps burning you in the same way, even after being confronted about it, it might be time to adjust your expectations accordingly.

Your vacation time is precious.  Don't use it on something that won't refresh you.

Stop and look at what direction you are headed, and whether or not you even want to get there.  If not, get off the road. You're still the one in the driver's seat.

Stop right now and think of one thing in your life that you want but don't have. Figure out how to make it happen, and start taking steps that direction.  Your inner voice will yell at you until you do.

Above all else, be considerate.

Find a new author you like every year.

Life is seldom boring for long stretches of time.  When you get a boring stretch, enjoy it and use it to grow while you have the energy free.

My life is a mess. Why anyone listens to me about anything is beyond my comprehension. But you, me and God will get through 2013, come what may. 

I can't wait to see what happens next.