Uncle Lonnie’s 12 Facts of Life

Just a little fun, for me, in this post. It’s half tongue in cheek but the truth, at least, by my observation and experience. Now don’t get all bent out of shape because non of this is what anyone would call politically correct. I’m not interested in being politically correct. These are things that I share with my grand-children. These are Uncle Lonnie’s 12 Facts of Life.

Life is not fair. Life has never been fair. Life will never be fair. Life was not fair for your mama or your daddy. Come to think of it, life was not fair for your grandparents either. Whoever told you that life was supposed to be fair lied to you. Get over yourself and get used to it.
The world we live in does not care about your feelings or your self-esteem. If you want to feel good about yourself, you must apply yourself and accomplish something first.
As a high school drop-out you will not make $20,000.00 a year. You will not make $60,000.00 right out of high school nor, most likely, college for that matter. You must work and earn promotion over time to acquire those numbers.
If you think your teachers are tough, go out and get a job and a boss.
No task is beneath you. Flipping burgers is not beneath you. In my formative years I dug in the dirt and shoveled manure. Be thankful you can flip burgers.
When you mess up, and you will, the responsibility is yours. Own your mistakes. Accept the consequences and learn from them. Don’t whine and blame everyone else. Don’t repeat the cycle. Make the necessary changes. The same actions repeated will only yield the same results.
Your parents were not always so dull and boring. They used to be quite happy and they did fun things together. They got dull and boring by providing you with shelter, clothing, food, and an education because they LOVE you. Be thankful that your parents are dull and boring. They nurtured you.
In school and sporting leagues, everyone wins for participating. Life has not done away with the win/lose columns. You will either win or you will lose. Don’t be a loser. Winning requires effort on your part. Winning will cost you something! Losing will have a higher cost in the long run. Just make certain that whatever arena you choose to win in, it is an arena worthy of winning in. How you define winning and losing is up to you and God. That applies to ALL areas of life!
Don’t think for a moment that you have the capability to “find” yourself. You don’t have a clue! If you had a clue, you would not have “lost” yourself in the first place!
Real Life is divided by seasons and I’m not talking about Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. Real life is not divided into terms, spring breaks, fall breaks, semesters, and summers of leisure. Seasons, often times, cover a time span of years. Enjoy school as long as you can. It’ll cost you ten to fifteen years of work to get three weeks of paid vacation in the real world. You read that right, three weeks, not three months!
Television, video games, movies, news media and radio are not real life. They have their own agenda. That agenda is to make money from companies who have invested A LOT of money in advertising/marketing campaigns to separate your parents from THEIR money. Your parents are the REAL people who do REAL work and earn REAL money to support your fantasy world!
Be kind to ALL who are around you. You don’t need a good reason as to why you should be kind. The exams of life will be graded according to how you treat others. What goes around comes around. To get respect you have to give respect.

Okay, I said it was “Uncle Lonnie’s 12 Facts of Life”. Well, I lied. Which leads me to #13 and #14.

Don’t tell yourself the lie, “I’ll be glad when I’m grown and no one can tell me what to do!” Believe me, you will ALWAYS have someone telling you what to do. Unless you are independently wealthy and have the investment capitol handed to you from the beginning, you WILL have a boss to tell you what to do. And don’t make the threat, “I’m just going to go and join the military.” You don’t want someone telling you what to do? Yeah, go join the military.
Here’s the last thing. Be grateful that you live in a day and age where most parents will allow you to get away with bad behavior by putting you into “time out” or revoking some, or all, of your privileges. Don’t confuse privileges and rights. Rights are granted by the Constitution of the United States of America. Privileges are granted by dear old mom and dad, especially since they are footing the bills. Don’t confuse correction with punishment either. Punishment is a prison sentence because you broke the laws of the land. I know that’s not politically correct because they are not called prisons anymore. They are called “correctional facilities”. Correction is to help you understand the laws of the land so that you don’t break the law and wind up being punished in prison. I hear tell that there are some pretty traumatic things experienced by some folks in prison. I guess there ain’t much correction going on in some of those facilities after all. Another thing, just so you know. In my formative years it was LEGAL for a parent to knock your lights out and then revive you with a garden hose before issuing you a good old-fashioned spanking! It didn’t hurt me none. I didn’t grow up hating my parents and I never spent a single night in jail. I reckon that’s enough said.

I don’t know if any of you had any fun with this but I sure did. Hope I didn’t offend anyone being politically incorrect. If I did, well, here’s another fact of life for you. You’ll get over it and the wounds will heal in time. I’m just a mean, grumpy old man trying to keep a youngster out of the bird cage. Remember this though, all you parents. It’s not our job to raise good kids. It’s our job to raise responsible adults!

Oh yeah, one more thing,

If you have been denied something that you want, it’s probably because of one of three reasons. 1. What you WANT is not necessarily what you NEED and you do not possess the wisdom to discern the difference. This is the most likely reason. 2. Your parents cannot actually afford your champagne tastes. A soda pop budget trumps champagne tastes EVERY TIME! 3. You have not invested the time, energy and WORK to acquire whatever it is you WANT. Therefore, you do not deserve what you WANT!

God Bless and Godspeed!

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Uncle Lonnie’s 12 Facts of Life

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