There comes a time and age when a single man settles on the fact that the woman he ends up with will have a ready-made family for him. It’s the price we pay for showing up late to the ball; by the time single guy has defeated the work-force, made his bones, and decides on the whole nuclear family bit at 30+, his queen-to-be will have already danced the dance with another man. The bachelor accepts this, tries to look past it for love, and hopefully does a pretty damn good job of snapping into the role once they are married. Now of course there are many single men who hold out of their Golden Pegasus with no kids, but these guys aren’t exactly successful when it comes to sealing the deal. Baggage has a lot more faces than merely having children with another man, and they find out harshly that the childless woman may… [Read more]

When we see someone out there doing well, taking time to be an upstanding gentleman and curbing his actions to stay right when children are involved, we just smile and keep it moving. At the same time when we someone with more money than God, a large house, athletic ability and an incredible savvy for finances, we get upset at their transgressions because they are supposed to be role models. In my opinion it is up to us as people to switch this up and stop pushing the honor of role model unto bad men in hopes that they will feel scolded and change their behavior for the better. A role model is someone who is already in motion doing things worthy of the title, not someone who your kids latch unto for want of shooting a basketball just like them. A role model is the big brother who works 2 jobs, takes care of… [Read more]

A woman relates to men VERY differently when her father passes away. I never really got to spend time with my father before he passed away. It changed my entire perspective of what relationships are like, meant to be like, and what they are supposed to be about. Your dad (for a woman) is a sounding board. When any asshole messes up your life, you go to him. I don’t have that luxury. I don’t know what it feels like to have a dad and even to be loved by one. That’s not to say that my dad doesn’t love me, of course he does – and i love him back; but to really experience and feel that love… I don’t know what it feels like. I don’t know what it feels like to have a man in the house because I don’t even have a brother; so I learnt how to carry heavy boxes,… [Read more]

I would like to share my thoughts on a book referred to me by one of our Lady Dragons: Cherry Tigris. The book entitled Toilet Paper People is a quick read but has such a strong message that I found myself thinking about it weeks after finishing it. Toilet Paper People is about a form of bullying that cannot be remedied by telling your parents, fighting back or even standing up for yourself; the type of bullying that I am referring to is that of a parent bullying a child. Many of us remember the 1981 movie Mommie Dearest where a popular actress was shown to be a psychotic child-abuser behind closed doors. The movie was entertaining and shocking for its time, leading to many quotables and memories of the onscreen antics of Faye Dunaway portraying the film queen Joan Crawford as she beat her little girl with wire hangers and competed with her in the… [Read more]

Do you ever think on something that you do constantly and ask yourself “why do I even bother”? Well believe it or not many of us do little things that we think is productive but it turns out to be merely an activity and not the purpose that we set out to accomplish. A great example of this that I can personally remember deals with athletics and more specifically: athlete parents. I had the privilege of teen-sitting my girlfriend’s daughter for a week and being that she’s a little warrior I was made to play athlete parent for her cross country event. While out there I did a bit of people watching and literally shook my head at some of the people I saw running (or trying to run) with their kids, screaming like maniacs and trying their best to motivate them as they ran the course to improve their time. When the race was… [Read more]

What do you say to a child that has to go to school every day when they know that they will be subjected to abuse? Do you tell them “oh you just stand up to that bully son! I will not be upset if you get suspended for fighting back!” Or do you tell him/her to go to the principal? While parenting is one of the hardest jobs ever, you cannot dismiss bullying as a growth mechanic that will teach your kid a valuable lesson about life. The reason I say this is because no bullied child ever gets over the scars even as adults. Yes, the grade school taunting will make someone self-conscious even if they’re 40 and a CEO of a business. It doesn’t help that the bully is some loser now on a jail rotation and dying. It doesn’t matter that you conquered life and have a beautiful family and more money… [Read more]

One of my biggest arguments for team sports is the normalizing of the Superhero prospect. What do I mean by that? Well when you haven’t played team sports and your only experience with teams stem from either video games or what you see from a distance – your brain tends to romanticize the ability to go beast. See in video games when you are playing sports or even military skirmishes, you have power-ups that can be timed and used to allow one member of the team to single-handedly bring it back. When you play a team sport and you try to individualize the loss and turn on beast mode, you find that it isn’t something that you can call up at will. Only a very small amount of people can turn on the beast successfully but when you play games and watch movies you think that it takes a wink of the eye to perform… [Read more]

Schools don’t care that your child is being bullied. Principals don’t care, the bus driver doesn’t care and while their teacher may care, the effectiveness of one teacher is extremely limited. Fact of the matter is that much of the fault falls squarely on your shoulders as parents. Your detached relationship with the kid and refusal to enroll he/she in a martial arts school due to the cost, or the pain in the ass of driving them there daily, has led to them being the “prison bitch” of their school campus. Oh why use the harsh term “prison bitch” on this topic? Let me explain. School is a faux Prison System Many kids will not even talk about their bullying to their parents out of embarrassment (they have the asshole dad who will just recant the old “just stand up to them son” without any detail) or fear of the wrong kind of interference (the… [Read more]