Dad To Son: Eat Right, Study Hard, Vote Well

Dear Number One Son,

By now, I hope you’ve received your absentee ballot for your very first presidential election. It’s your ticket to full-fledged citizenship, so try not to lose it beneath that Mt. Everest-sized laundry pile on your dorm floor.

(click here for the rest)

15 Comments

  1. Mike the Eyeguy

    So, do you think I’ll get a “He’s a Yankee Communist Infidel Terrorist” letter to the editor or not?

  2. mmlace

    Regardless of whether or not that earns you a “letter-to-the-editor” it sounds like INCREDIBLE advice from a father to a son.

    “Fount of wisdom” indeed!

    Thanks for sharing, Dr. Eyeguy!

  3. JRB

    Well done. I think it’s right on, of course, and see no cause for objection. Even so, I’m sympathetic, and you did go and use the word “change” realistically and use the word “maverick” sarcastically. You also suggested that Jesus may not have a favorite horse in the race, so, yes, you probably will.

    It was great to run, worship and eat with you and yours this weekend.

  4. Mike the Eyeguy

    Thanks, the “font of wisdom” thing was intended to be the most sarcastic thing in there; not sure if that came across that way or not.

    As far as I know, none of my columns has produced a single letter to the editor (too boring maybe?), but I figure this one might. Folks are pretty hyped up right now and the tinder is pretty dry.

    JRB, I concur, and hopefully now that my relatives live, oh, about 45 seconds from the front door of your church, that will happen even more often.

  5. mmlace

    Dr. Eyeguy, I’ve been reading you for awhile now, so I knew how you intended your “wisdom” comment to come across.

    I just meant that, despite the sarcasm, you really did give very wise advice.

  6. Mike the Eyeguy

    I know, but I’d had second thoughts on that before you mentioned it. In fact, I had an ironic “ahem” preceding it in earlier drafts but eliminated it on the final version. I’m not surprised you figured it out, but looking at it now I can see how some might not.

    In any case, as my family will tell you, my reservoir of wisdom is more like a trickle, not a font.

  7. mmlace

    Well for the record, I believe I’ve experienced more than a mere trickle of wisdom here at Ocular Fusion.

    That’s part of the reason I keep coming back.

  8. Mike the Eyeguy

    You’re much better off sticking with Keith Brenton :-), but I appreciate the loyalty.

  9. mmlace

    Keith is good. He’s my favorite. But you’re second, only to him, and only because I worship at the same church with him, so I see him a couple of times a week. So he’s like a real, actual person for me, not just a name and picture I’ve seen only on a computer screen. (If that makes any sense?)

    Your blog does share one thing in common with his. Of the approximately 30 blogs in my reader, yours and his are the only two that, when I got into this blog-reading thing a little over a year ago, I enjoyed so much that I felt the need to go back through your archives to see what all I’d missed!

    So for y’all, I’ve read everything you’ve written on here. (Okay, maybe I skipped over a soccer post or two here…but I’ve read ALMOST everything!)

  10. Laurie

    Power-hungry men have been dressing up Jesus and other religious leaders in fancy clothes and pimping them out for their political purposes for centuries. Shame on them!

    My thirteen-year-old wanted to know what made me burst out laughing. I said it was a smart guy in Alabama. 😉

    My oldest two will be voting in their first presidential election this year as well. Some of my proudest moments in the last year have come as I’ve watched them become politically active in their own right — reading widely, discussing intelligently, even giving up an entire Saturday afternoon to attend their party caucus. (They were registered at their school adddresses — different precincts — and my daughter spent extra time making sure my son got to his own caucus. It was that important to her to help him be involved.)

    When my sister-in-law got a particularly vitriolic forwarded email against a candidate we both support, she asked for my help in responding to the person who sent it. I forwarded it to my daughter, who put together a brilliant point-by-point rebuttal. I saved it and read it periodically to remind myself that she is a jewel.

    My husband and I aren’t perfect parents, but we watch our budding citizens and think that on the big things, we did okay.

  11. doublevision

    Great advice!

  12. Mike the Eyeguy

    Laurie, yes, one very “smart” guy who knows a good line when he sees one and is not above a little plagiarism. 🙂

    I would have given you some attribution for those words which are eerily similar to ones you used in a recent comment, but I didn’t have room for a footnote. So, pardon my “Joe Biden,” and thanks, Laurie!

    And yes, isn’t it something to see the numbers of young folks energized this time around? I’ve hammered my little “Alex P. Keaton” pretty hard. I don’t know if he’ll end up voting like me or not, but I know this: he’s going to think long and hard before he does.

    dv–thanks, glad you enjoyed it.

  13. Hal

    I was backpacking with my #2 this weekend, so I didn’t get to read your article til this morning. It is very good, but much less controversial than I expected based upon your “shot across the bow” last week. I especially like what you said about if Jesus were here today. But, since I’m really more liberterian than anything else, I would naturally agree that both major party politicians should take a hike.

  14. Mike the Eyeguy

    That was my usual Friday-before-publication hype. Shameless, I know.

    Then again, you know better than anybody all the reasons why I can’t afford to be too controversial.

  15. Laurie

    Not offended at ALL Joe…er…Mike. 😉

    What tickled me was that an idea I thought might be too racy/controversial to leave as a blog comment is now in a red-state newspaper.

    Nicely done.

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