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By Jack Godbey

Columnist

 I’ve received a lot of good advice in my life. Granted, I’ve ignored most of it and learned my lessons the hard way, I’ve still got it somewhere in my brain. It’s probably buried underneath all the useless trivia and algebra formulas that I never use.

As I think back to some bad things that happened to me, I realized that most of it was my own fault because I ignored someone telling me better. My father was always busy trying to give me good advice to keep me out of trouble, but I somehow found a way to find my share of trouble anyway.

 I remember once back in 1978, my father walked into my room and found me working on a box fan while still plugged into the electrical outlet. My dad saw the potential disaster that I was getting ready to experience and literally pulled the plug on it as he said, “Son, don’t saw the tree branch you’re sitting on”. While I understand that advice today, at the time, my 10-year-old self-had no idea what he was talking about.

Ironically, a week later after being told multiple times not to walk under the tree where my brother was trimming branches, I ignored that advice and I ended up with a tree branch on top of me. I escaped the ordeal with only a black eye. However, when I went to school the next day, the story of how the black eye happened somehow grew into me fighting off a gang of ninjas.

I seem to recall another time when I went against the advice of my parents and ended up paying the price for it. My mother was always a jack of all trades. She was a chef, a seamstress, and a pretty good barber. In fact, my mother cut my hair my entire life until I was an adult and nature took care of the need for any haircuts. I remember when I was very young, my mother was giving me a haircut to ensure that I looked my best for picture day at school which was the next day. While she was using the electric clippers, my sister and brother were engaged in a shouting match in the next room. My mother sat the clippers down to restore order to the house and gave me the order, “Don’t touch the clippers”. So, what did I do? You guessed it. I touched them. I don’t know how, but somehow, they magically turned themselves on and proceeded to cut a big gap right in the middle of my bangs. When my mother returned, all she said was, “Oh honey”.

And yet, another time when I ignored my parent’s advice was around the summer of 1976. My sister and I were chasing each other through the house at full speed. My father had told us to stop running in the house before someone gets hurt. Of course, I totally ignored the advice. Running full speed with my sister hot on my heels, I ran through the house and tried to open the screen door without ever slowing down. However, my hand slipped off the handle, so the door didn’t open. However, I kept on going full force right through the screen door. Glass flew everywhere and cut me up so bad I looked like I had come out of a horror movie.

The moral of the story is that many of the bad things that happen to us can be prevented if only we would listen to the advice of others. I have to go now; I have a coupon for a free skydiving lesson.