OT: Oh, My!

You're old when you hold the 100th anniversary of your parents' birth.

Getting older is good!

Fear of the alternative is what religions make their money on.

John

Seems a rather peculiar metric to me. Where do you get that from?

Interesting concept... that would be 2018... one year away. ...Jim Thompson

But happy and proud. That's worth a lot.

Great! Next step - get one of those bumper stickers so you can rub it in around the neighborhood. ;->

I tend not to do that.

I usually ignore bumper stickers, though one I saw a few years ago almost provoked me to key the bastard's car...

"My son just beat up your honor roll student"

Can you fathom what causes that kind of nasty mentality?

Today... if I see such a bumper sticker... bombs away >:-} ...Jim Thompson

You're a modest man; very wise.

Yeah, I heard about those.

I can only assume (and hope) it's meant as some kind of joke.

I really wouldn't let it bother me, Jim. Those people aren't worth it.

I tend to light up easily over those. As a kid I was a runt because of polio at age 6 (no paralysis, just poor lower body development... I'm ~6" shorter than my cousins). But I had an academic bent... probably because both of my parents were teachers at one-room school-houses prior to their marriage.

Even back then (1950's) academic achievement seemed to invite bully's trying to beat you up.

I identify with Forrest Gump... I could run like the wind... but they'd often catch me.

Then I adopted my signature defense... grab 'em by the throat and not let go... I don't know how many punks I turned blue before some adult neighbor intervened... probably lucky for me, or I'd have gone to prison ;-)

In High School I got phenomenally lucky... I acquired a friend who was a dead-ringer for "The Fonz", leather jacket and all... Dennis Dunbar. The bullying stopped ;-) ...Jim Thompson

A pretty inconsistent measure. It was five years ago, for me. They were 39/40 when I was born.

Most are pretty stupid but some have made me smile.

I saw a mildly funny one yesterday that said "My stick Chihuahua bit your stick family" (with a picture of a stick family cowering in the corner).

One of my favs, when we lived in Vermont was "Moonlight in Vermont... Or starve".

Then there was the one that I wanted to get for my wife but never found "I've been having a bad day since the house fell on my sister".

It seems like a clumsy but innocent attempt at making fun of the whole idiotic and self-indulgent bumper sticker craze.

Someone explain to me how anyone can think like this. The idea that a bit of sarcastic humor on a bumper sticker justifies destroying property is just the sort of perverse thinking that happens in JT's head.

That's how I see it, too. (and how I *want* to see it).

Jim Thompson's described in a message in this thread (dated 12/04/17 00:47) that he had been bullied as a kid. He wrote "Then I adopted my signature defense... grab 'em by the throat and not let go... I don't know how many punks I turned blue before some adult neighbor intervened... probably lucky for me, or I'd have gone to prison"

Now I was always the shortest in my class and the proverbial 7st weakling, but I managed to avoid ending up like that.

Old saying: "You can take the boy out of X, but you can't take X out of the boy". Now X is usually a place, but in this context X could be "the bullying".

I can see how such a person would like Trump; a feeling of similar ethics and/or a familiar situation/relationship.

I suspect Jim doesn't realize that Trump would have been one of the kids adults would have had to pry him off of. Why is it that victims of bullies elect bullies later in life? I can't fathom that.

Is this an explanation?:

John

A very interesting question.

A tangential observation, w.r.t. battered women, has long stuck in my mind...

Erin Pizzey set up the first UK womens' refuge in the UK, in Chiswick in 1971. She ran it for years/decades. Eventually she gave up for a very revealing reason.

She observed that many of the women she helped in the refuge /actively chose/ to go back to the abusive relationship. Why? Pizzey came to believe that it was because the women knew and understood the relationship and their role in it - and being in a role/relationship they understood was easier than braking free into a more normal/loving relationship.

Maybe there is some similar psychology in this case.

Yeah, Jim seems to be such a lefty sometimes.

I take a more simpler, evolutionary approach. Evolution's summary, is whatever generates the most, is what is mostly observed. Its a numbers game. I don't hold for all this this convoluted psychology clap trap.

Females do not select males based on what is best for them, but what will generate the most/best of their genes, i.e. their offspring.

One might argue that selecting a tough, strong guy that is willing to fight are the characteristics a female desires in her offspring, on the basis that such characteristics are conducive for survival of her offspring. Whether or not it might do her some harm is not that important so long as the anticipated evolutionary gain outweighs the loss. Being "easier" and "more loving" are vacuous explanations with no actual real content to them. It keeps psychologists employed though.

The reality is, the female must be highly choosy for her gene stock as she only gets one change a year to produce one. A male has 1000s :-)

Everything we think do and say has its roots in the evolutionary requirement to maximise numbers. If behaviour don't have an evolutionary based explanation at its core, its usually wrong. If it contradicts evolution, its definitely wrong.

-- Kevin Aylward