Lectures

My dad used to lecture me from time to time. The experience annoyed me greatly. He may have been telling me something important and worthwhile, but I could see these lectures coming at me from a mile away and always found them unpleasant. I hate to admit it, but I regularly turned off my mind and ears to him.

I still don’t know why I resisted these lectures so much. Was it the mode of delivery, the tone of speech, the content, or the fact that I was a teenager? Whatever it was, I didn’t like these lectures, so I didn’t listen. My dad was a stubborn man, and I didn’t fall far from the tree, so the harder he lectured, the harder I closed my mind. I am so curious now what he might have been saying back then.

When Ann was entering her teenage years I still vividly remembered mine. My teenage years were wonderful and dreadfully awful at the same time. I remembered how difficult those years were. I imagined that Ann would surely face some of the same experiences and issues I faced years before.

And so I had some “lectures” that I wanted to share from time to time that I thought might be helpful. Remembering the pain in the butt I must have been to my father, I hoped that there might be something I could say or do which would create a short window of attention from Ann.

I had a great many words of preamble. My hope was that these preliminary words would make my speeches palatable. I explained how I found my father’s lectures to be tedious and how I did not listen. I apologized for the lecture but that I felt it was my job to share my thoughts as her father. I asked that Ann listen ever so briefly, or pretend to listen, as that was her job as daughter. If she did a good job pretending to listen, it would make me feel better about having done my job. I told her my words were probably useless to her, but I might accidentally say one or two useful thoughts. At the very worst I would waste only a few moments of her time.

After the lengthy apology I would deliver my few words of “wisdom”. The lecture was quite short in comparison to the preamble. Each lecture was preceded by roughly the same lengthy apology. After Ann had survived several of these lectures in good form, the preamble seemed tedious, so the next time around I simply said to Ann, “I have lecture number 2,384 ready to share. Do you remember all that garbage I typically say leading into one of these?” She’d say, “Sure Dad, what’s the topic this time?”

I often talked about my high school experiences and asked if this or that was still the same way. We talked about good teachers and bad teachers, and that you could learn from both even if the only thing was the difference between the two. We talked about how high school resembles a prison or a police state, and that life begins when you are free from high school and enter college. We talked about dating, cliques, exclusion, and much more.

I tried to stay away from anything that was actually going on in Ann’s life; that really would be an annoying lecture. It was more like “these things happened to me” and “this could happen to you if it hasn’t already”. I hoped that she wouldn’t have to learn everything first hand; you can learn from others’ experiences, from history, my history in this case.

A few days before Ann left home for West Point we were headed somewhere in the car with John. Ann turned to John and said, “Dad has these ‘lectures’ he likes to give. Some of them are pretty good. You might want to pay attention when he gives one.”

That was one of my favorite compliments.