Tag Archives: Lessons

The Wrong Lesson

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When I was younger, in 9th grade, I became infatuated with a Turkish gal who later got the nickname ‘Turkish Delight’, from a poem I wrote about her (out of a dozen or so!). I spent the whole year of 9th grade thinking about her, and when she discovered I liked her, she decided she didn’t really want to talk to me or hang out with me. I was crushed and it took me quite a while to recover from that, move on, and be interested in other girls like a normal human being.

I remember distinctly one day, whilst in the car with my parents, after much thought, thinking I came up with the answer.

What answer? Why the answer to my problem – a broken heart.

I proudly announced to my parents that I knew the answer, “The best way to not get hurt is to never fall in love.”

Without missing a beat my Father told me that was the exact wrong answer to gleam from my situation. Rather than never falling in love, the correct answer was in fact to be more discriminating with regards to with whom one falls in love with.

Of course I thought I was right, even if I admitted that my Dad was usually right about everything.

It’s funny, because it took me almost 9 years to remember this incident and to have learned the lesson for myself. It really makes me wonder what other wisdom that my parents passed on to me that I just…didn’t hear or listen to.

Makes me all the more grateful they’re still around.

~Wald

Lessons Page

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Lessons (SP)

Unlike normal college, you don’t accrue student loans while attending the School of Hard Knocks because you tend to pay up-front for each lesson. Still, the costs of these kinds of lessons can be just as ruinous if you never transfer from the School of Hard Knocks to College of Learning From Your Own Mistakes or the Ivy League-grade, University of the Mistakes of Others.

So, in no particular order, until I take the time to go through them all, here some of my lessons, that you may put an “old head on your young shoulders”. I’ll constantly update this page as I go.

  1. What is she looking at?
  2. Body Language 1
  3. My First Major Fail
  4. Second Major Fail 
  5. Lesson on Body Language and Fail #3
  6. Connect Four
  7. On Being Operational
  8. Operational Failure

~Wald

Violence is the Answer

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Allow me to tell you the story of Jimmy.

Jimmy was a young boy playing army men with his friend Jonny. Jonny had a magnificent toy tank. Jimmy wanted to play with it, but Jonny didn’t want to share. Jimmy wanted to play with it anyway and took the tank. Jonny gave him a knuckle sandwich for his troubles. Now both Jimmy and Jonny were but little boys and as such, while Jimmy’s face certainly smarted, there was no damage. In a normal world that would have been that.

Jimmy’s mother heard his cries and came rushing into the room.

Jonny! How could you do that? Violence is never the answer. Tell Jimmy you’re sorry and shake hands.

Jonny apologized as he shook Jimmy’s hands, not sorry at all. Jimmy learned he could share people’s things whether they wanted to or not.

*15 years later*

Jimmy and Jonny are going to college. I don’t remember what they were studying because it isn’t important. What’s important is that Jimmy and Jonny live across from one another in an apartment. One day, Jimmy’s walking back up the stairs and notices that Jonny’s door is wide open. He walks inside to investigate when he spots a rather large pile of $5000 in cold, hard cash and a pile of white powder. Apparently Jionny’s been doing well with his side business. Jimmy decides he needs to borrow some cash for activities and the $5000 sitting in front of him is perfect. Later that day, Jonny returns home only to find that his cash from his drug dealing has up and went.

He walks across the hall and knocks on Jimmy’s door.

Jimmy did you take my money?

Jimmy with dollars hanging in his waist band says that he has not.

Jimmy – first you steal my money and now you lie to my face.

And with that – Jonny the drug dealer stabs Jimmy to death.

__________

What just happened is life and the end therefore when someone learns a lesson later on in life, when the cost of learning is higher than it is earlier on. Had Jimmy’s mom not stepped in – he would have suffered a sore face and a good lesson in interpersonal relations.

Secondly, it’s no coincidence that Von Clausewitz once called War “Politics by other means”. At the very basic level – Jonny punched Jimmy in the face when he saw that politely expressing his lack of desire to share did not dissuade or prevent Jimmy in any way from taking his beloved possession of a toy tank.

Ergo?

~Wald

A Short On Love

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After a conversation with Ace, I’m starting to see things more clearly on love.

The first thing to consider is that the woman does not love as a man does. She may love you now, today, at this moment, but not tomorrow. She may say “I love you” just to hear the same from your mouth. Perhaps, because then she knows she has you. And if she does truly love you, it is not for the things you, as man, may wish she loved you for. You are not likely to be loved for your honor, your honesty, or valor. More likely, how you make her feel, your confidence, your utility, will draw her love.

I dare you to ask a past love why you earned hers. The answer may haunt you.

Woman love you because they should – not because they can or want to. They love for what they wish to be loved for. It is no longer a surprise to me that women cannot understand men who do not appreciate being used.

While it may hurt to understand this – the pain fades. The lesson I believe you should take from this.

“Find a use for the woman – or she’ll find a use for you.”

I am at this point still not sure how to tell a woman that I love her. In some circles, it is acceptable to say, “I love you too”. In others, nothing less witty than “I know” will do. Or perhaps one should reframe, redirect, redraw attention to another area. Specifically not the topic of love. All, it seems, agree that one should not say “I love you” first, no matter the cost.

The thing I notice – is that the answers given to the question “What do I say when she tells me she loves me” center how it will affect the woman. I have yet to see anything deal with how it affects the man.

To that – I ask a question. Forget the woman in this equation – do you want to go your entire life without telling a woman you love her?

~Wald

My First Major Fail

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Before I got into game, I failed majorly with girls. But with each failure, I learned powerful lessons that seared themselves into my memory to this day. This is not to say that my learning experience pre-game was nothing but fails, I had small success too. But I believe I learned more from the fails than I did my successes. I intend to share my failures, so that other men can learn from them too.

This is the story of one such fail.

At the end of eighth grade, I switched schools. I went from military school in the U.S. to an international boarding school in England, south of London. I went from an all guys school to a coeducational school. The beginning of the year was interesting as my head was constantly turning to look at all the girls I was not used to seeing or dealing with, outside of school dances.

In November of that year, I went to my second  high school dance. I don’t remember all of it, but what I do remember was that about half way into the dance, I started dancing with this Turkish girl. We’ll call her Turkish Delight, or Delight for short. As I danced with her more and more I decided that she was really cute. We danced and talked until the formal was over, and I walked her out like the little gentleman I was.

I had a good time, and as I lay in my bed, I was enamored.

I started talking to this girl more and more. She would come to my math class during break and we would talk. Her favorite band was Nirvana and she hated Kurt Cobain. In my creative writing class we started covering poetry so I wrote her a poem about Nirvana which she liked. As we started talking more she asked me, “Who do you like?”

I told her to tell me first. She told me she liked some Dutch guy. I gave her a vague description of her “Brown hair, tan, danced with me at the last dance”. She seemed to have no clue who I was talking about and wished me luck. I got her number and contact info (man, that stuff was easy in highschool). One day I learned that she had never had eaten gingerbread before, so I went, got her some (it just so happened a school event offered free gingerbread), and wrote a poem about it! I gave her the ginger during the break in class, but didn’t get her the poem. We went on Christmas break.

I started talking with one her Dutch friends who was in some of my classes, and as we became good friends, confided within her everything. She loved my poems and romanticism and what not, and encourage me to write them and said she would find out if Delight liked me or not.

At this point I had written a small amount of poems about Delight. One poem about the dance we had was even called “Turkish Delight”. I talked about Delight constantly and she was on my mind all the time. I talked with my friends, my parents, and the Dutch girl. At first they were all supportive.

In January I didn’t talk to Delight for a while and I thought it was all over. I wrote sad poems about the end and how I wish I had another chance. Then I started talking to Delight again and I started writing happy poems. I remember I woke up at three in the morning to write a poem about her, inspired from a song by Akon that reminded me of her. In April, she saw a poem I wrote about her because I mentioned I had won some poetry competition and she an awkward thank you. In April, before Spring Break, we had a group presentation due and I took complete control and made a fool of myself (the class was amused but the teacher was not). She got pissed off at me. My Dutch friend told me through text a day later that Delight did not like me. When I went to talk to Delight she told me not to talk to her for a while.

I felt crushed. I talked about her all the time still. My friends tried to lift me up. They told me that they had tried to get me to look at other girls but I only had eyes for Delight. One friend asked Delight if she would ever date and she of course said no.

If you felt sympathetic but tired of hearing my story up until this point, then you felt exactly like my friends. It took until January of the next school year for me to stop talking about this girl.

However, I did learn a lesson from this major fail – I learned not to get too attached to any one girl  too quick.

I mean, I never even kissed this girl. We were never going out. Yet, in my head I was already dating this girl, in love with her, obsessed even. I wrote over 12 poems about this girl and even wrote some vague poems on Facebook about her (I have since deleted the Facebook ones). I got way too attached for no reason at all.

I have kept the poems I typed on my computer as a reminder of what happened so I never make the same mistake again. So far, it’s worked.

Learn from my fail.

~Wald