Hollywood thinks that talking about your bullying experience will actually help. In some regards it does… as an individual sharing your feelings with another you get the sense that someone else is sharing the burden with you, but it doesn’t stop the problem.

I was bullied from Kindergarten all the way through High School. The bullying was directed by teachers – not just from other students or peers; Teachers were the main criminals. Who do you turn to when you’re six years old and your teacher is calling you names like “loser” and “a nothing – a nobody – that’s all you are and all you’ll ever be” in front of class. What about when you’re twelve and a teacher holds up a playboy in class, telling the girls that if they don’t look like that they won’t amount to anything in life? Or when you’re thirteen and your coach makes crude remarks about you in front of other boys in the locker room? What about when you’re sixteen and the teachers choose to look the other way while you’re getting the crap beaten out of you in the hall?

School is a crime against humanity. The system wreaks from the inside out. Although I don’t condone what happened at Columbine, those kids had enough. They talked and adults didn’t listen. When nobody listens, you have to make some noise… sadly, their noise was through bullets ending the life of others (both guilty and innocent of bullying). The big noise now is through Facebook announced suicides.

Although suicides are among people of all race, creed and color, the big craze now is in homosexual suicides. I can say from experience that this has been going on for decades and has only started getting recognition. When the other boys don’t know why you’re different, they just start assuming you’re gay and call you names and treat you accordingly. I was never gay, but apparently many guys in my class thought otherwise… or they didn’t know big words like “unique” or “introverted” or “sensitive” or “empathic”.

Last weekend I recounted to my daughter why I delved into the occult when I was twelve. It was to escape the pain… Even the memories are painful. Memories of having my face buried in a toilet full of feces then flushed… of opening up my locker to find it full of used condoms… of having a boy force his groin up to my face in gym class… of being physically bullied so much that I passed out in the school hall… of having someone dump a bottle of skunk essence on my head then being sent out of class because I smelt so bad it was disrupting… and the smaller continuous things like being flicked in the ear each day on the bus… having chewed gum or thumbtacks stuck in my seat… and all the degrading names… the list goes on. I felt like even God couldn’t do anything about it. The fantasy of the occult promised super powers and magic that anyone caught in the fabric between childhood and adulthood while in the midst of despair would reach for. I bit that apple, but it didn’t give me anything more than paranoia to add to the pain and darkness.

I certainly thought of suicide, and so did one of my friends who did eventually go through with it. My parents knew some of what went on and took it to the school council. They balked at my parents. If this were happening today, lawsuits would be involved. Back then, the council members were only embarrassed enough to make arrangements for me to cut gym class, but forced me into special ed because I was different. Had I lived in Colorado Springs back then, I probably would have gone through with suicide because it’s so common here that I would have had the “support” of both bullies and peers to “off” myself. (Sadly, Colorado Springs has the title for the second highest suicide rate in the nation. First billing goes to Las Vegas.)

If you want to do something about it, keep your kids out of school or become hot-damn determined to go to every PTA meet and visit campus weekly. It’s already been proven that kids can learn reading, writing, arithmetic and history through a better environment than what our government provides. Let me add that they can also learn more about life and live a happier one with some dignity intact by keeping them out of school. When my dad confronted the dad of one of the school bullies, merely stating that he needed to have a talk with his child, the parent’s response was a threatening “so what are *you* gonna do about it?”

When morally cheapened parents put their kids in a rotting system that spends every effort being politically correct and conforming children into the same mindset, teachers are robbed of their own human rights, are stripped of authority and anarchy inevitably takes over.

If children choose to go to college, warn them about fraternities and sororities that condone hazing, sexual misconduct and alcohol abuse. These debase human beings to the behavior of animals. There are so many great clubs and organizations that an “all boys” or “all girls” club is purely unnecessary and pointless. Better friends are made elsewhere.

… And when it comes to being bullied, it’s the hope from a good friend who stands up for you that makes living the next day a viable option.

Consider that there are alternatives to school. The most successful people in the world are the drop-outs: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ansel Adams, Julie Andrews, Billie Holiday, Tom Hanks and a list of nearly a thousand others who make the top 1% of the world’s revenue and political influence. School is not for everyone, and it’s apparent that going to school could even hinder your child’s future success. I’m not saying these people weren’t educated – I’m saying public school’s version of “education” isn’t suited for the greatest achievers… In most cases that’s who the bullies pick on – perhaps because that’s who they fear.

This year I’m re-landscaping the backyard out of necessity. Prior owners installed ceder trees and juniper bushes which means that each year allergy sufferers live for a month within the “life-in-death” nightmare described by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It’s nearly hell!

They also poorly engineered a deck and built it without a permit and mounted it to the foundation of the house. What I mean is the numskulls took the protective siding off the house and without flashing or caulking just bolted the deck beams into the sill plate and stem wall. It’s now rotted and needs to be replaced. We knew the yard needed work when we bought the house, but the expense is insane! For removing rocks (that were put down directly in the dirt… that means without any tarp or weed guard), tearing down a rotting deck, removing several of the ill-placed deck posts, regrading the lawn for drainage and installing a new sprinkler system (the old one died) the cost went over $9k.

Word to the wise out there… clearing out a yard can be as expensive as putting in a new one. This holds particularly true if the previous owners didn’t think ahead, didn’t pull any permits, and didn’t do the yard right.

So since we have to invest so much money into the yard, I’ve thought of doing some magic on it. If Disney could make a castle look bigger than it really is, why can’t I make a yard look bigger, too?

The August 15th 2010 post on Ray Kleim’s Haunted Dimensions about Fred Joerger made me think about how this could be done. Objects at the back of the yard need to be slightly smaller and slightly up hill compared to items closer to the door and windows of the back yard. To avoid flooding issues, I refuse to grade the yard to slope uphill from the house, but placing items such as bird baths on a brick to raise it an inch is doable. Here’s the “formula” I discovered. Whether it’s the correct math or not, I don’t know. It’s just from observation.

The size of the distant item can be mimicked by a smaller yet closer item of size X when the percent difference of the two objects are reflected by the distance between them (Distance B) and the distance of the smaller item to the eyes of the beholder (Distance A).

Viewer …[distance A]… Small Item …[distance B]… Large Distant Item
Viewer …………………[Total Distance]……………… Large Distant Item

If the small item is 50% the size of the large item, distance A and B are the same. If the small item is 25% the size of the large item, distance A is 25% of the Total Distance. To create a perceived distance that extends my back yard another 5 feet, the fence plank dimensions along the back need to be reduced by a percent of B/T given that B = perceived additional distance and T = total actual + perceived distance.

Since my yard from the back door to the back fence is approximately 45 feet, the formula would be 5/(45+5) or 5/50 or 10%. So if the planks are 6′x6″, I would shave 10% off of all sides, making them actually 90% their actual size. This would require shaving roughly 7″ from it’s height and 1/4″ from each side of the plank. To make it look near perfect, I’d need to raise the ground along the back fence by 3″ to 4″. As mentioned before, I don’t plan on regrading the yard, but I could add a couple of inches more rock along the bottom of the fence.

What would all this achieve? The perception, from looking out the back windows of the house, of a yard that’s 225 sq feet larger than it actually is. The trade-off is that from the back of the yard looking towards the house, the yard would “feel” smaller.

Learn about forced perspective from the following videos:
LOTR Forced Perspective Moving Camera (and platform)

Ames Room Illusion – Temple Grandin

I haven’t been as good with this as in the distant past, but have been wanting to do it more recently. The idea is to treat each of my daughters to a “date” to show them what to expect from guys who date them in the future and to spend some one-on-one time with them to get to know them better. It’s a bit intimidating because my expectations are a bit high and after a long work-week I’m pretty worn out.

How do you date a ten-year-old? I have a few plans based on her interests. For example, take her on a photography walk at dawn after stopping to get some donuts. What about my other two daughters? There’s glow-n-putt … bowling. Hmmm the bowling alleys strike up memories of thick smoke and cursing old men, but they should have a family night that would omit both of these nasties.

A friend on facebook asked what constitutes a date to a guy. In her case a boyfriend asked her over to his place to watch some TV. This means one of two things to a guy: either he’s really wanting to hang out with her or he’s trying to put her in a compromising situation. She’s right to be offended if he implies this invitation is a date. It means he offers low standards to her.

How to plan a date:
1. Know her interests.
2. Plan a place and a time.
3. Give her anticipation.

Don’t get mad or irritated on a date – ever! Even if the waitress throws a plate at you and you see cockroaches crawling on the kitchen floor. Just politely excuse yourself. If the lady looks embarrassed then explain to her that she doesn’t deserve to eat at a restaurant where the business doesn’t give her respect.. that she deserves better. Apologize to her, and take her someplace else. It’s best to scout out the place first, then you won’t be in an embarrassing situation of paying a bill for food you won’t eat… but don’t even sweat it. She’ll associate your frustration with her, not the restaurant.

As my girls get more sophisticated, I’ll deliberately go into these situations to show them how a man should behave.

At a dinner talk my wife introduced the question “What shows more character: the way a person acts while being watched by others or the way a person acts when not seen by anyone?” My answer was “Neither. A person’s character is best seen when put in a nasty situation. The uglier situations are the most revealing.”

When my wife and I dated, I would take her up to the restaurant, glance around, check out the menu, check out the bathroom (people who cook your food spend time there and if it lacks soap, they didn’t wash) then on occasion, leave. She would get very upset. It was in her head that if you parked in the lot of a restaurant, a hidden obligation was set that you had to eat there. To alleviate her embarrassment, I would ask her to stay in the car and relax while I checked the restaurant out. After explaining to her that I wanted to show her a good time, and wrenching for days after going to a bad restaurant does not equate to a good time, she agreed to this solution.

It’s things like having the man think about and look out for them, showing responsibility and initiative, that my girls are being taught to look for…