Hey John     

I’m recently married.  My wife has an eleven year old son.  I have a problem with his eating habits.  He can’t live without sodas and crappy food.  We were mowing the lawn and we were both really thirsty.  I went in and brought out 2 cold waters.  He raised a fuss and took one sip.  He said he’ll  just wait for his Dr. Pepper.  I can’t get his Mom to help me help him to be more healthy.  Both he and his Mom are pretty plump.  I can’t convince her that it is in his best interests to not grow up to be fat.  Am I out of line in pushing healthy food?  Is my step-son destined to be Fat Freddie?
 
Healthy Dad
 
 
Dear Mr. Health,
 
First off-did you know this woman and her son before you married her?  I assume you did.  What has changed since you fell in love with her?  I agree with you that introducing your family to a healthier life style would be in their best interests.  But, the question presents itself:  how much right do you have to insist these people follow your way of life?  I assume you fell in love with wifey for reasons beyond your desire to watch her change her diet.  You underestimate the influence you can have by quietly leading the way.  You also underestimate the amount of resistance you will create by being a nagging pain in the posterior.  So here’s a few recommendations. 

1. Be a loving, supportive husband to your wife, and step father to your new son.
2. Go shopping with your wife once in a while.  Pick out the healthy stuff you want, and pipe down about whining about the case of Dr. Pepper and 3 bags of pork rinds she might buy.
3. Introduce junior to a few tasty treats.  Don’t take it personally if change comes slowly.  Cheese or peanut butter on celery, cut carrot sticks with ranch dressing, toasted seasoned baked pita chips are all fun to eat.  If no one eats them, you eat them.  Kids are starving after school – it’s a good time to tempt him with clever tasty grub.

Be an active loving husband and father.  Be a good example and relax.

She came in ready to unload. It was appropriate considering she had a number of issues that were of concern. However, it was a difficult session as she never stopped to inhale for an hour. Finally I had to politely interrupt her to slow the flow of complaints. Without minimizing of any of her concerns, I told her I was needing to provide her at least an observation. Maybe even an idea or two. So  when I stopped her and told her I was OK to just be her sounding board, but if she was seeking some possible solutions, I had something to suggest. She agreed. So I asked her if she wanted to engage in a therapy experiment. I ventured: “for one day, 24 hours, I would like for you to reflect on how often you get negative and complain. Then, even in mid-sentence, stop and re-direct your comments. In other words, no complaining whatsoever for 24 hours. The point is to see how much of your life has become negative. You don’t have to start liking negative stuff, just no complaining for a day”. She cautiously agreed.
 
Two weeks later she came in and said, “Are you trying to make me crazy or something? You’re making me nuts. Because I messed up so much on the first day, I decided to do it the next. It’s killin’ me. Now I notice all the time when I’m constantly complaining”. Although this was not the completely expected outcome, we both found it interesting how we have to purposely make ourselves be positive. And that negative has become so easy. What the heck has happened to us?!
 
So here’s how I personalized this piece of advice for myself (i.e. kidnapping Thanksgiving): on Thanksgiving I’m going to make it a personal day to concentrate on thanks giving. The pilgrims were probably brave folks, even with their weird hats. The Indians seemingly welcomed them, and of course got fleeced in the long run. But enough history…. I want a fun holiday. So on Thanksgiving I try to temporarily shut down my whining, and wallow in my gratitude. I’ll have to remind myself 500 times throughout the day, “what cool things am I grateful for?” Then really think about them for a while. Let me give you a couple of personal examples:
*My first public speaking gig was as a college senior. I was to give a five minute presentation about, of all things, juvenile delinquency; a topic which I had some personal experience in. In front of only eight other classmates, I crapped out. I couldn’t keep my voice from quivering. I couldn’t remember what to say, so I gave a lousy minute and a half presentation and got a D. Today I had a group of twenty, and it was like talking to a friend in my living room. Somehow I have developed into a public presenter, and I am amazed and very grateful.
*I was lost in the excitement and beauty of music by the age of 14. Although almost everyone my age has a big surround sound stereo, it’s only used for TV viewing. Any music, if any at all, has been relegated as background fill. As an older guy I still derive such pleasure from music, it is a constant joy. To this I am incredibly grateful.
*I only excelled at bowling and ping pong when I was younger. Well, music recognition too. Somehow, along the way I developed into a real counselor with decent credibility. How did this ever happen? It’s amazing.
 
Get it? It’s not an exercise of monotone recital of things-I-am-grateful-for, but rather a deep look into what cool stuff we hardly even pay attention to. Dig deep, give it lots of thought. After all, you have the entire Thanksgiving day to give thanks. It’s kinda disturbing it takes so much effort, but I’m ready to really celebrate Thanksgiving. So I’m going to chase away Mr. Whine and instead be Mr. Gratitude for a full day and start loving Thanksgiving again.
I’ll top it off with the big tasty bird. And the candied yams. And dressing. And cranber……

I have a retired counselor cyber-friend from Israel. A few years ago I was putting together my web page, so I asked Rona for some ideas. One of her suggestions was to look at other therapist’s web sites to garner some ideas. I was amazed that their blogs were full of personal political rants, opinions as to the state of the world; basically on online diary. Yow! What a weird thing to publish. So I opted for what I knew best: a counseling-based web presence. However, this week’s blog is a departure from my web philosophy. Specifically, a remarkable friend of mine just died after a long battle with cancer. Andy didn’t get out much, so most people did not know him, and that’s too bad. So this week is a tiny glimpse into the life of William Andy Wade. It’s not much, but it is the least I could do for this amazing human being.
 
William Andy Wade (Andy) just died. I wanted to come out to his place last weekend for our usual every other Sunday visit, and he texted me he was too sick to have company. Tuesday night I got another text from him informing me he was in the hospital. As a stubborn “tough guy”, going to the hospital had meant things were grim. I saw him twice Wednesday and the same on Thursday. My last visit Thursday night was indeed grim. He was in a lot of pain, and seemed to not be aware of much else. A bunch of people came to say goodbye during the day. His friend of 42 years, Gary and I stayed with him at night until the meds finally relieved the pain and knocked him out. Gary and I left about the same time, but Gary went back for a while later that night. I received notice the next morning (Nov. 2, 2018) that Andy had died. He was 68.

Through all the stories I have been privy to, it is clear I knew Andy in his “calmer” years. He lived in Brownwood for 21 years, and I knew him for about the last 15. I always felt like I was holding onto the tail of a comet as it was finishing its orbit. As a metallurgist / quality control expert / international pipeline inspector plus numerous other titles, Andy was regarded as one of the best in his field. He once slept in a large pipe lifted off the ground with a crane in Iran (“the scorpions will definitely kill you in the night”), and inspected pipeline hundreds of yards long, deep underground on a mechanics sled. The only air to breathe had to be pumped into the pipeline. He lived in Brazil, Indonesia, Nigeria, Paraguay, London, and Hong Kong to name about one third of the countries he lived and worked in. Everywhere he went, his work was held in extreme regard. One person said, “Whatever job Andy took on, he became the master of it.”

He worked hard, and from the numerous stories shared with me, he played hard. He was a tall, Shakespearean actor-looking guy. Long silver hair, a handlebar moustache and pearl white teeth, he attracted attention wherever he went. Sometimes positive attention, sometimes not. Someone recently shared this little glimpse into his past: “We were in the airport and Andy never took his sunglasses off. Once we were in the plane, Andy was sitting across the aisle from me, and I asked him why he kept his shades on. He took them off to show me a really huge black eye. He told me last night he was at a ghetto bar (they were in Rio de Janeiro), and he whipped everyone at the pool table. When he walked outside with all their money, six of them jumped him. The last thing he remembers was a boot coming down on his head. When he woke up it was dark and he had no idea where he was. And it smelled bad. He reached up and opened the lid: they had tossed him into a dumpster.” There are many stories, including his throat cancer, misapplied radiation “therapy” that destroyed every one of his teeth and slowly killed his right hand and arm, and other ailments he had to deal with.

But here’s the story we all needed to know. He came over our house to introduce to his great friend Gary a few years ago. After enjoying listening to them reminisce, I asked Gary how he first met Andy, and he began, “Do you remember the old telex machines?” [single line of paper coming out of a machine- the precursor to the fax machine]. Andy got inexplicably got mad and walked out of the room muttering, “I don’t have to listen to this shit”. Gary continued, “A telex came through the office that one of our guys in Indonesia was in a horrible flat boat accident. Everyone: men, women and their children were drowned. Everyone except Andy and a young newlywed couple. He was able to get to them and swam seven hours, all night long and saved them. I decided then that I wanted to meet him when he got back.”

Although I am pleased to share my friend’s greatness, I am so sad as I close this. William Andy Wade, all of us that knew you well knew we were the privileged few that got to be your friend. I will always be grateful to having been a friend of yours. I close by quoting you when you wrote a kind note to Denise shortly after she shared that her Mom had just died. “Head stones are for those left behind. As a child of God she is free of all earthly things and now is basking in the glory of the Lord.”
As are you my fine friend. Faretheewell.

As “Hey John” has morphed into a gen-u-wine counseling column rather than just a weenie weight “advice column”, should the situation arise that the email requests are blank (like this week), I will present you with hopefully significant events to contemplate. This one has added to my existence. I hope you find it useful. 
 
Part One: The Visit
 
I walked in the door, having completed my eight-hour shift as a bartender, and my hour commute back to San Jose. I was greeted by my eight month pregnant wife and her mom and dad who had journeyed from Austin to come visit us. I was complaining that one of my regular customers, Connie (Conrad) spent his sipping time at the bar to whine about how unbelievably slow AAA was at responding to his flat tire call. When I asked the 45 year old why he didn’t change it himself during his two-and-a-half-hour wait, he responded, “Hell, I’m getting too old to do that”. Too old?! My father-in-law Claude (Nolen) somewhat misunderstood my story and explained to me: “You know, when you are young (I was 23), everything seems possible. But, as you grow older, you begin to realize that your age is a limitation to some dreams. Think of the great college basketball player who dreams of being a pro. Now he’s 35 and he realizes he’s now too old to begin a professional career. Take me for example. I wrote my book for my dissertation many years ago. I have planned on writing a second book ever since. Now in my mid-fifties, it’s too late to begin such a momentous task. It’s a bit of a sad reality coming to grips with the fact one is too old to do something he had dreamt about for so long.” Although it made sense, it was a little depressing to think our time is always running out on our dreams.
 
Part Two: An Interesting Combination Of Events
 
Many years later, our firstborn Justin moved in with his grandparents, Jeanne and Claude in order to limit the costs of attending Austin Community College. We gave Justin our office computer with an old (and difficult to master) word processing program, Bank Street Writer. It took me quite a while to show him how to use it. After his first year at ACC, he got an apartment with a friend and left the old PC at his grandparent’s house. Jeanne began calling me on a regular basis about using the computer, as she had never used one before. To make things more complicated yet, she was getting instructions, one at a time, on how to use Bank Street Writer. She decided to transcribe the thousands of nearly illegible little notes Claude had written over the years into the computer. It was a seemingly an impossible job. Week after week, month after month Jeanne typed and Claude also dictated information he both knew and researched about The Black’s role in the Civil War, Slavery and Reconstruction. He finally exhaustedly submitted his work- and was rejected. He revised it over the next months, submitted it, and was rejected again. He made revisions again, and on June 1, 2001, McFarland Publishing put Claude’s book on the shelves. Although Claude generously gave credit to numerous family members for their assistance, it was his and Jeanne’s very late-in-life completion of a long lost dream. He figured it was out of reach in his mid-fifties, and he proved himself wrong. He was eighty.
 
So the obvious question presents itself: at what point in our lives do we know things are no longer possible? Can we re-start ourselves at fifty? Work at doing something we had previously given up on in our sixties? What about at eighty? Knowing that there is a possibility of achieving old dreams, or for that matter, new dreams regardless of our age is a lesson to be considered as we grow older.