Government Sucks, the 'Dancing Chicken,' and Other Rules for Life

The happiest time of my life was raising my children. Before my children came along, I was a crazy workaholic, obsessed with “deals” and making money and fueling my oversized ego.  I am proud to say I never changed a diaper. For god sakes, I’m a man!  Nor did you ever see me with one of those ridiculous papoose things carrying a baby on my chest. Ugh! If I ever had to carry one of my children, I did it the same way one grabs a Chesapeake Retriever, by the scruff of the neck. While I didn’t much notice my children at first, I didn’t totally neglect them either.  I got them all a lifetime NRA membership when they were born.   I started to notice them when they quit smelling like their own poop.  My deep affection for them started when I taught my 18-month-old daughter Ella her first complete sentence. Virginia was shellacking Carolina in basketball, so I had to rib some of my buddies in the Tarheel State by putting Ella on the phone to display the new trick I taught her. With a mellifluous lyricism and cadence Ella said: “Dean Smith is a ______.” This word is not politically correct these days, but it rhymes with Andrew Cuomo. I was so proud of her! It never dawned on me that one could teach their children to trash talk UNC grads! Wow, this was fun! From that point on, I decided being a Dad was the bomb! In order to spend more time with my children, I gave up drinking and then golf and quickly found  that with a little bit of self-discipline, I could be a good dad and a workaholic.

I put all three children to bed at night, at different times according to their ages. I would read or tell them stories.  We would sing songs out of the Episcopal Hymnal, such as the Saints of God and Joyful Joyful.  Even though I am a big strappin’ hoss and meaner than a two headed rattlesnake, I get a bit moisty eyed when I hear these songs (pls don’t tell anybody). The final act in this bedtime ritual was to say prayers, starting with the one my dad used to tell me at night as he placed his hand over my forehead. Then the prayers would “go rogue,” and we would freelance, but always ending with people we would bless. Ella would not want me to leave so she would end up blessing everybody in the frigging phone book.

While telling my youngest Sally stories, I often told her that she was really a monkey and we got her at the zoo. We chose her because she was the cutest monkey of all the monkeys at the Washington Zoo, which of course has the cutest monkeys of all the monkeys in the whole world. We then took her home, cut her tail off, slapped a dress on her and made a little girl out of her. She’s still in therapy.

I coached all their sports. I taught them in Sunday school and youth group.  I had to enforce the “No Hugging Rule” on my all-girls U-13 team. They would want to hug each other after a good play or a goal was scored and would get out of position. Then I would yell from the sidelines “NO HUGGING, NO HUGGING!” They were all so damn cute! By the way, that year we were undefeated and unscored upon! Still a record in Richmond Rec League soccer!

After swim meets, 8 or 9 little girls would pile in my car, and we would drive to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. I told the girls my car would not run unless they sung the “Handsome Rob” song which I of course taught them.  My car would slow down to a stop, and then the girls would sing or say “oh Mr. Smith, you are so Handsome” or otherwise praise my athleticism and then my car would speed up again. 

During this time, I would come home from work and my 5yr old son Coleman would be sitting on the front stoop with his and my glove in his lap and a baseball in his hand. There is nothing, absolutely nothing better in this world than a Dad throwing a baseball with his son.  We lived adjacent to St. Christopher’s School, and Coleman and I would run pass routes on the freshly limed football field.  We would pretend we were playing Florida State or whomever the #1 team in the nation was at that time. We practiced so much that I swear if we were both blind folded Coleman could catch a 40-yard pass from me. We were in perfect sync. To this day I keep an authentic NFL sized football in the trunk of my car just in case the opportunity to toss the pigskin around with him arises even though he lives 2,700 miles away in San Diego.   If a magic genie offered me $18 billion and 47 supermodel concubines for all these happy memories, I’d keep the memories.

There was one thing I wish I had done more. I cut the cable off to wean the children from tv. Before supper, I gathered the children around for literary hour.  We would read Greek mythology, poetry, bible stories, passages from the Book of Virtues and those large print short children’s books on the great classics. We read Patrick Henry’s Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death speech dozens of times, Robert E. Lee’s General Order # 9, Longfellow’s The Ride of Paul Revere and the Declaration of Independence. After about a year, the cable company magically turned the cable back on, and that was the death knell of literary hour.

If I sound like I’m preaching, I am. The best thing a father can do is spend time with his children and their friends. There are certain things that can’t be delegated. Fatherhood is # 1 on the list. A dad teaches his son how to be a man and illustrates to his daughters what a loving man is and thus the type of man she should marry. Men are hard wired to provide for and protect their families.

All of this brings me to Rob’s Rule # 16. There seems to be a tendency today to slough off certain duties to the so called “experts” and “authorities.” Often this is done to shift responsibility and relieve oneself of the obligation to “own” the duty. Why be responsible when you can hand the responsibility to the experts?  The United States has spent trillions of dollars trying to “fix” various social ills. This tendency to allow the collective to assume the individual’s responsibilities creates a situation where individuals abdicate their innate responsibilities to best take care of themselves and their children. After a few generations of government, people actually think it is the government’s role to do things that past generations did for themselves.  Indeed, they have no knowledge that they are capable of breaking the shackles that entrap them in a world of poor performance and utter incompetence. This is what I call CROCKPOT SLAVERY, slowly cooking people into submission, thinking they are helpless  and must take their direction from Big Government.

A couple years ago I introduced my readers to the DANCING CHICKEN RULE. In the private sector, when something doesn’t work, one tries something new until something does work. With government, the more a particular policy initiative is a colossal failure, the more money it gets.

For just one example, the government school model doesn’t work.  At the LeBron James “I Promise” School, not one rising 8^th grader in the whole school has passed the state math tests for the past 3 years. Only 8.2% of 7^th graders were proficient in English, and this is a Charter School flush with cash. Here in Richmond, the public school system spends $17,000/year and it graduates functional illiterates. How is it possible that a school system has a child captive for 30,000 hours over 13 years, and entire graduation classes can’t do 7^th grade math, conjugate the verb “to be” or find Canada on a map?  Suppose these failing kids did not have a “free” school to go to,  but every one of these kids had a responsible father in the home? I can assure you that these kids would be much better educated. Not long ago, when there were very few police per capita,  it was safe to walk the streets at night and very little violent crime. Do you know why? It’s because a dad would shoot your ass in a second if you messed with his family. Funny, today’s urban neighborhoods have 50 times more police than in 1960,  but much more crime. Class, reread Rob’s Rule # 16.

All it takes to fix most social problems is for government to get out of the way and let dads be dads. Instead of telling deranged fruitcakes that they can change their sex, promote marriage. Instead of saying “we are from the government, and we are here to help you,” say “fix your own damn problems.” History is replete with examples of families educating their children with no government help, saving money for old age without the scam that is Social Security and policing their own neighborhoods.

“But Mr. Rob Is Right, how can you be an anti-government zealot, expect the incompetent government which you distrust so much to promote the family?”  Easy, quit spending so much money and shut the fu*k up. It is the natural order of the universe for men and women to bond together, have children and do whatever they can to nurture them and protect them. 

Rob’s Rule # 17 is the reverse of Rob’s Rule #16. Don’t enable people to be irresponsible, and they will become responsible. And always, the individual is a better steward of his life and liberties than the government.

P.S. Did I mention the government sucks.