‘If your doctor asks if you keep guns in the house, say goodbye.’

Keep in mind that I while I not always agree with the person who wrote the post, he has the best interests of his community and country at heart. Still, I feel a need to defend the profession that my wife of 15 years uses to provide for our family and those of our employees.

Accident prevention is an integral part of preventative healthcare. Our youngest patients and a surprising number of parents need to be taught to assess the safety of their home and family lifestyle. Not because they’re bad parents, but because many people are so overwhelmed by the chaotic job of raising children, that common sense dangers such as pot handles dangling over the edge of a stove, or choking hazards may not enter into a caregiver’s train of thought.

Here is a link to data provided by a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services:

http://www.childrenssafetynetwork.org/sites/childrenssafetynetwork.org/files/UnitedStates2012FactSheet.pdf

Given that unintentional injury is the leading cause of death in young people, doctors need to ask a variety of questions to ensure that children and parents are aware of safety hazards. The questions are age appropriate and tailored to the patient being examined. You don’t ask a four year old if he is having unprotected sex any more than you ask a 15 year old if he looks both ways before crossing the street. Encouraging honest answers out of young children to their providers helps to ensure a bond of trust throughout the difficult years of adolescence and young adulthood.

During a child’s physical examination, a thorough provider will often ask the parent if there are guns in the house and if they are loaded. This segues into the child being given a hypothetical question of ,”What would you do if you were at a friend’s house and they showed you a gun?”

Guns in the house become important once again in the case of a teenager showing signs of depression or worthlessness since nearly half of teenage suicides are perpetrated with a firearm.

See the above link for available data from HHS.

In light of recent events and subsequent knee jerk reactions by legislators, Americans are concerned that their guns are going to be taken away. Another viable concern is that some rogue newspaper is going to publish their address simply because they have a firearm owner’s permit. Couple this with the invasive nature of Obamacare and constant meddling by health insurance providers and it’s easy to understand why physicians would be eyed suspiciously for asking a child if their parents keep guns in the house.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. A conscientious provider will ask questions regardless of whether the parent is made to feel awkward or not. This is done strictly in the name of providing comprehensive medical care and has absolutely nothing to do with the provider wishing to infringe upon a parent’s domicile or prerogative in how to raise his or her children. Accident prevention is simply a cornerstone to preventative healthcare.

Julia is developing into an intellectual force of nature. She’s reading her first books, memorizing all 50 states and is so maternal, she tucks in her wooden train cars by laying them on their sides and covering them with a square of toilet paper.

Age 17

Julia is at the top of her class through years of hard work and preparation for college knowing she wants to be a teacher someday. She achieves high SAT scores on her own merits.

Age 18

Julia prepares for her first 2 years at Community College with the intent of transferring to an affordable university to complete her teaching degree. Her parents work very hard to pay  tuition for her and her brother.

Age 22-27

Julia falls into the vast majority of young people who are healthy and require no emergency health care. She exercises and lives a healthy lifestyle because she knows what lies ahead. Julia does not concern herself with Ledbetter Act because she knows her skills will fetch the same compensation as her male colleagues. What residual loans Julia may carry into her adult life will be reimbursed in structured payments just like her parents did. Julia understands that expensive medications are readily available at discount prices through private corporations which helps her save money.

Age 31

Julia has been working for 6 years as a teacher, has married and decided to start a family. She works as long as she feels it is safe for her and her baby while taking prenatal vitamins and getting prenatal care from the Obstetrician of her choice. She takes sabbatical to give her newborn the best start at life she possibly can. When her husband opts to work, Julia takes a long term leave of absence to raise her child.

Age 37

When Julia’s daughter Victoria starts Kindergarten she is a shining example of what a great teacher her mother has been. Julia looks forward to nurturing Victoria through the coming years of learning and developing with a sense of self confidence that eludes many children coming out of the government programs.

Age 42

Julia takes a part time job teaching at a charter school for gifted children. She also teaches part time for an internet based curriculum so that she may be home for her daughter’s return from school each day.

Age 65

Julia chuckles at the memories of her late father’s warnings of Medicare and Social Security being insolvent for her retirement. Her favorite stories were underscored by how made he got when talking about the “Boomers” whoever they were.

Age 67

Julia teaches part time at the same Community College where she got her start to help make ends meet. She saved enough and has a small pension from her years of teaching. She spends her free time with her grandchildren knowing that she wouldn’t have changed a thing about how she lived her life free of government assistance.

Mr Obama, my Julia will never serve under you. She is far too bright, compassionate and capable to fall into the trap of government entitlements which progressives use to lure so many away from their dreams early on in life. My Julia is the future of how this nation shall be rebuilt to it’s former glory.

]]> http://normboardman.com/2012/05/05/the-life-of-my-julia/feed/ 0 normboardman http://normboardman.com/2012/05/02/imam-tells-it-like-it-is-2/ http://normboardman.com/2012/05/02/imam-tells-it-like-it-is-2/#comments Wed, 02 May 2012 13:38:34 +0000 Norm Boardman http://normboardman.com/2012/05/02/imam-tells-it-like-it-is-2/ Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur Rashid Speaks to a crowd at Union Soquare May 1, 2012. Please Subscribe. Thank you.

Imam Al-Hajj Talib Abdur Rashid Speaks to a crowd at Union Soquare May 1, 2012. Please Subscribe. Thank you.

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NY city council member speaks to a crowd at Union Square May 1 2012

The young man before me with the deep voice and a dirtstache had seemingly moments before been my little cousin Anthony. The guy is 10 years younger than me and while I had never disliked him, we really hadn’t had much in common until our mutual love for music brought us closer. By 1994, Anthony was toast and Tony was entering the scene as a gifted teenage musician. What the hell, I’ll give this kid my extra ticket.

Our evening’s entertainment was to be Smashing Pumpkins performing it’s Siamese Dream Tour at the Breslin Center of Michigan State. The hottest ticket in town, I had offered it to my younger cousin and assured his mother that I was no longer a raging madman, but a responsible and sedate 24 year old. She laughed and gave her blessing. She also conveyed to me with a look the untold horrors that awaited me were I to bring her baby home in anything but pristine condition.

Breslin Center is the basketball arena for MSU and I believe it seats around 10,000 people. I had seen smaller bands play the arena where they had pulled a curtain at the proximal free throw line and had a few bleacher seats and a curved section comprised of the upper and lower bowls. On this particular evening, someone had decided to place the curtain at the distal baseline of the basketball court, sell all of the bowl seats and enough general admission seats to fill no more than one third of the available floor space. Couple this with the fact that uninterrupted staircases divide each seating section from floor to ceiling, and it was apparent to a veteran concert goer like me that this was a disaster in the making.

Suddenly, the house lights go down, the young crowd screams and the main event takes to the stage amid shrieking guitars, vocals and flashing lights. A number of  kids try to run down the stairs onto the main floor. A few are successful while others are chased and tackled by members of the largest security detail I had ever seen at an MSU concert. Occasionally a kid would evade the guards and sprint across the floor and disappear into the back of the writhing crowd to the screaming delight of the poor souls trapped in the upper and lower bowls.

After the Pumpkin’s second song I looked at my cousin, who was watching the developing situation like a cat about to pounce on it’s first mouse. “Sorry dude, not tonight.” I told him. Then I turned to my friend and showed him the look on Tony’s face. Johnnie laughed and asked if I was going to let him go play. When I replied to the negative my friend asked,”Would YOU be up here at his age?”

Under the weight of Johnnie’s unimpeachable logic I screamed into Tony’s ear, “Remember which door we came in? If you get kicked out, meet me there after the show. Be careful, have fun and remember if you get hurt, your mother will f*****g kill me!”

Tony scooted with alacrity across the row to my left until he reached the aisle. It was at this precise moment that my first attempt at responsible mentoring took a critical downward swing.

In my haste to be cool, I had forgotten all of the red flags going off in my head regarding the mismanaged seating arrangements.. As my cousin shuffled sideways toward the aisle, I perceived a vibration which quickly changed to a rumble only to become so loud as to drown out the noise of a rock concert. A quick scan of the venue revealed that the entire upper level of the arena was sprinting en masse down to the main floor. The last I saw of my little cousin was his thigh catching the armrest of the final seat he had to negotiate before heading down the stairs. He stumbled and was immediately swallowed up by the human avalanche.

I watched the wave of adolescents gallop down what seemed like a hundred or more stairs and run  head on into security guards who’s hands were outstretched like a drunk woman singing Diana Ross on karaoke night. They didn’t even have time to bend down and kiss their own rears goodbye. The kids went through those poor workers as if they were made of vapor.

Moments later, numerous flashlights indicated that someone at the base of Tony’s staircase had been seriously injured. 18 years later, I feel the guilt which eluded me that fateful evening as I noticed the lemon yellow shirt of a security guard was being hefted away strapped to a backboard. My cousin must have survived the melee.

I remember little of the concert after that point. The Pumpkins played their set, requisite encore and left the stage. Through it all my eyes constantly swept the crowd, looking for my charge in a sea of manic humanity. Upon walking out of the exit doors, my heart lifted when I saw Tony standing there dutifully. I listened in numb relief as he gleefully recanted the adventure of sprinting onto the floor and crowd surfing.

A recent post on Twitter in regards to the Smashing Pumpkins led me to this trip down  memory lane. Given the title of this post, I’ll briefly segue my time as a pretend parent to one terrible moment as the giver of someones life.

In the winter of 2003, my wife and I finally decided that our kids at the age of 4 were old enough to go sledding at a local hill. She stayed down at the bottom of  while I walked up with the children. When we had risen a sufficient distance about two thirds of the way up, I turned around, loaded my son and pushed him head first down the hill. Once again, time stopped playing as a motion picture in my mind and became a series of vivid snapshots each with it’s own searing caption.

Just as with my cousin in 1994, a complete lack of situational awareness underscored by my desire to make someone happy had led me to make a critical lapse in judgement. As my little dude slid away squealing, “Whee daddy wheeeeee”, I noticed a few things. First, the snow was actually very icy and slick. Second, my boy was gaining speed at an alarming rate. Lastly, he was heading straight for a tree at the bottom of the hill.

As the thought, “I just killed my son” raced through my mind, I felt the same hopeless, impotent feeling from the concert amplified tenfold. The sound of my words, “No No No No No” barely audible in my ears, I braced for the moment of impact. The sum total of my parenting, nurturing and protecting of that child now lay in the hands of The Almighty. I was through having a bit of influence over whether my boy lived or died. May no other parent experience such a feeling.

 Little dude caught just enough of a lip at the last possible moment to veer him to the right where he rocketed past the tree. He then hit a patch of sun thawed, drenched leaves that immediately stopped his sled, causing him to launch face first into a mud puddle. My laughter must have seemed inappropriate in contrast to the oohs and ahhs of the other parents on the hill. I scooped up my little princess and met my equally panicked wife at the scene of a most narrowly averted tragedy. As much as happy endings preceded by suspenseful tales rub me the wrong way, I am glad to report that on this day in 2012, I just tucked my 12 year old children into bed for the evening.

I recently tweeted that wisdom is the net difference of subtracting reality from idealism. The point being that we have experienced enough in this world by the time our children are born that spotting danger and the corresponding path of evasion should be instinctual.  Parents owe it to their brood to consider all possible scenarios before granting permission for the sake of being well liked.

How many of us stood mute with clenched teeth last week while the president defied candor and committed blasphemy at the National Prayer Breakfast by insisting that Jesus would approve of him levying a tax on the wealthy? We couldn’t even watch the bowl game without POTUS toting the old fashioned American values of fairness and contempt for Wall St in his pre-game propaganda.

Short of griping on the social networks and blog sites, we’re mute because we have been forced into submissive silence over the past 2 decades. I first noticed the change when Clinton added the oxymoron ‘Political Correctness’ to the American lexicon. Thuggish tactics by the Reverends Sharpton and Jackson, smears by the ACLU, SPLC and dare I say the ADL left people fearful that any proclamation deemed insensitive or racially motivated could cost you your job, house, and even your freedom.

Fast forward 20 years and America is a shell of the dynamic culture she once was. The institutions of marriage and Christianity have been completely decimated by a handful of moguls that feed the masses a steady stream of promiscuity, immorality and a whole new batch of so called rights. In this I refer to the 24 hour news channels. Try watching a sporting event or prime time TV with your child and tell me revulsion and disgust don’t wash over you like rain.

Even debate for the purpose of exchanging ideals has become a thing of the past. All but the most seasoned, professional individuals resort to argumentum ad hominem and vitriol by the second interaction. The political ruling class feeds on this gangrenous condition like so many parasites and as such flourishes in the cesspools of federal, state and local governance.

The current situation is hopeless, correct? Hardly. As I stated prior, good ideas can and will be the saving grace of America. Leading by example and verbalizing good intentions in a manner which is meant to inspire and not subjugate will lead to a rekindling of the belief that all things are possible with hard work, support from one’s community and a bit of good fortune.

My wife works very diligently as a primary care physician to nurture the physical and spiritual health of her patients. In 2003, she left an owned practice and started her own office. In each our first 2 years solo, we identified a family that was falling on hard times and solicited the parents to be  beneficiaries of our Christmas donations. We then placed a spreadsheet on the  bulletin board in our waiting room indicating the age and gift requests for the family’s children. We provided a few gifts ourselves and then left the rest to the benevolence of our patient base.

The response was overwhelming. We took in so many gifts that the tearful parents hid some away for the following Christmas and we even donated some to local charities. In subsequent years, we sponsored children at a local women’s shelter for abused families. We currently deal with the Salvation Army who brings little gift tags that we hang on our office Christmas tree. They even pick up all donations and distribute them prior to Christmas.  I believe in 2011 we helped more than 30 kids have a memorable Christmas while alleviating the pressure of spending rent money on presents from their parents.

In the summer of 2010 I received an email from the PTA of my children’s school indicating that one of the families in our fold had suffered a tragedy. Their house had burnt down in the middle of the night and they had gotten out literally with the clothes on their backs. Within 24 hours, we had coordinated the rental of a beautiful farm house, replacement of the children’s clothes, toys and video games and even arranged enough volunteers to bring dinner to them for an entire month. A small individual effort magnified by dozens of willing participants bought the parents crucial time to get their affairs in order to rebuild their lives. I scoff at the notion that any government program or entity could provide relief with the kind of speed and efficiency that we the people did.

My family resides in a rural Northeastern community. There is a curved intersection near our home that requires routine trimming of wild shrubs and mowing of weeds to provide a safe viewing distance. For years I called the state and township transportation departments only to have the buck passed back and forth. Neither side claimed responsibility for the hazardous condition that persisted where my wife and I needed to turn left across an oncoming lane on a daily basis.

I’d been told through the grapevine that some former neighbors had received permission by the landowner to trim back the foliage at the corner. That was all I needed to hear. For the past 5 years I have accepted the countless poison ivy lesions and near misses by vehicles to maintain this small piece of the motorist’s landscape. Neighbors often stop and thank me for my efforts. My reply is always the same,”Someone’s gotta do it.”

 The old timers speak of an era when the neighborhood cleaned out it’s own ditches and kept the corners maintained. That time has since elapsed and people now lean over the fence and gripe about how unsafe our road conditions are in the township. At this point I am unaware of anyone besides myself that is willing to get off their duff and help the road crews so they may handle more pressing issues like filling in our ubiquitous potholes.

These are three of the many things that my wife and I do to help others in our community while teaching benevolence and a sense of responsibility to our children. The illustrations are not intended to bolster my sense of self worth but rather to ignite the spark of self reliance in a society which has been lulled into the mindset that ever increasing taxes and fees have bought us more and better services from our government. We have the sense to know that this is a complete fallacy of logic.

America is filled with millions of small businesses. Many of these offices, or shops that have high customer traffic would undoubtedly engage in the kind of non invasive solicitation that my wife and I have been blessed to participate in. People want to help others but may not have the knowledge in how to go about it. If you want to get involved, tell your doctor or merchant of another office that solicitsfromit’s patients gifts to help kids. You could even offer to put a food collection bin in their waiting room and deliver the contents to a local food bank on a regular basis. You’ll be amazed once the word gets out, how often you will need to empty the container. A few moments of your time and a couple gallons of gas are all that are required to make a real difference in the lives of many.

We owe it to our fellow citizens and their posterity to combat the ideas of government handouts and political correctness. Use your kind words and your charitable actions to set an example for others to follow. A tiny contribution by millions of people adds up to the kind of change we actually want to believe in. Leave the politicians to their frauds and felonies. Americans look out for their own.

A tragic event occurred in our community this morning/late last evening which necessitated a brief least restrictive lockdown-meaning all exterior doors were confirmed to be locked and the front door was closely monitored. After talking with State Police the suspect was not believed to pose a threat to students which is why this level of lockdown was selected.

Fair enough, the guy doesn’t pose a threat and is in custody. Still, the thought of my kids being associated with a ‘lockdown’ is unsettling to me. My wife and I started bouncing scenarios off each other. My first guess was that the school district had been notified of domestic violence that pertained to some of it’s students and had reacted accordingly. That was when the second email arrived.

In third grade I was introduced to a phonic set for memorizing multiplication tables. Those songs ramped up my obsession with simple arithmetic to a whole new level and was a revelation to the cathartic nature of music. I walked about a mile each way to school which took no less than forty five minutes. Looking down at the ground so as not to fall off the face of the earth while my mind raced, I recited those songs in my head over and over to take away from the monotony which was my barely perceptible movement.

The converse to my mathematical ability was an utter disdain and ineptitude for reading. The same teacher who pulled me out of class to run metric conversion drills would literally have to paddle me to get me to read. While I could memorize vocabulary tests with ease, the printed words rarely made sense and very quickly blurred into a distorted jumble of letters and phrases. I would quickly lull myself into a state of reading the same lines over and over. Before long, I would be staring entranced at the blurry page while calculating numbers in my head.

Coming from a fairly strict Christian home, I was forbidden to listen to any music that was racier than Mamas and the Papas, Frankie F***ing Vallie,  Simon and Garfunkel, etc. Not exactly fitting the bill for this kid. That all changed when I snuck my dad’s AM-FM radio up to my room one night. Hiding under the covers with the volume low so my dad wouldn’t hear, I fidgeted with the tuning dial until just above the electric mosquito like hum coming from the loudspeaker, I heard the sound of raindrops and thunder. A soothing baseline led into my first rock and roll experience, “Riders on the Storm.”

When Jim Morrison crooned the fateful words into my ear, “There’s a killer on the road. His brain is squirming like a toad.” I knew I had found a reason to live. Petrified with fear about serial killing hitchhikers, understanding exactly what a toad’s brain felt like and trying to figure out what a man was supposed to understand from girls taking him by the hand, I listened until the song was over. After turning the radio off I lay in bed, my mind whirling with a kind of stimulation I had never known before.  I had broken the rules listening to that music and the terror I felt from the lyrics and the threat of discovery along with it’s corresponding heart rate was to become the most addictive sensation known to me for the next 20 years.

I grew up in a small, one stop light town bifurcated by train tracks. I had to cross those tracks coming from  and going to school. This was a busy trunk line that sent noisy auto racks and coal gondolas hurtling through my stomping grounds at highway speeds several times each hour. Each time I was forced to wait for an approaching train, I would inch closer to the tracks to see what it felt like when the locomotive went racing by. Trust me, it felt good.

Sometimes I swear that had I reached my hand out, it would have vaporized into a crimson mist from the inertia contained within the metal screaming past me. I never once wanted to die, but there’s nothing to put the spring into one’s step like a butterfly kiss from the Grim Reaper.

This grew tiresome when I got a bicycle and made a point of racing to beat the train to the crossing each time I heard the whistle. To the east I could see 100 yards or so down the tracks. To the west was a school building, trees and a  maintenance shed which made spotting the train trickier. I loved racing down the sidewalk and jumping my bike over the tracks a second or two before the train arrived. I also enjoyed the gaping mouths and obscene gestures of  motorists waiting at the gates who apparently didn’t approve of my decision. There were some very close calls.

Other times my bike would be afflicted with the types of maladies that I would soon be doling out on my musculoskeletal system. It was broken. On these days I would walk about a quarter mile east on the tracks from my usual track jumping location.  If I was lucky a westbound train would appear on the horizon which would give me  a few minutes to decide if I was going to hurl rocks at it, climb the signal tower and wave at the engineer from eye level as he whizzed by or play chicken. I shall now describe a fateful day when I chose the latter.

Miles west of me the rails seemed to come together at a point. On a sunny day, the reflection often looked like an approaching headlight. Many times I would stand in the middle of the rail bed squinting as if wishing a freight rain to materialize out of the glare. Many times I would leave disappointed. This day was to be different. As the distant pinpoint of light changed ever so much in size and intensity,  my ears detected  the faintest whisper of a train whistle.  Yes!!!

A mile out I hear the familiar whistle pattern signifying the train had reached the last crossing to the east before coming into town. Now my brain is coming coming online. The butterflies are in my stomach and my heart is starting to thump. Time for some musical math problems  to keep an even keel. I start playing the multiplication jingles in my mind starting with nine. Why nine? Why not?

One long blast, two short blasts, followed by a final long blast precedes trains at every crossing in the nation. On previous episodes I got a couple of extra quick chirps out of the engineer because his job required him to grant me the courtesy that hindsight tells me I  failed to show him.

A few hundred yards out I feel the ground begin to tremble. Bearing down on me is a  low nose GP-35 with the yellow cat painted on the front. I now had a visual point of point of reference to time what I was about to do.  Nine times seven is sixty three, nine times eight is seventy two. Look around. Nobody is coming. Good.

One hundred yards out and the rail bed is really beginning to shake. The engineer goes into his pattern of warning whistles which is now uncomfortable to my ears. The cat looms larger with each foot the train roars closer to me.  At this rate of speed I now have about three seconds to live. No worries, I’ve been here dozens of times.  I’m just getting warmed up.

The first long blast has ended. As the second short blast  trails into what may well be the final sounds heard by me on this earth, I notice movement from the seat opposite the engineer. There’s a second man in the cab.  He’s waving his arm in a sideways motion as if to sweep me out of the path of his locomotive with a simple gesture.

Now things go into slow motion. I reference the movie where  boys are nearly run down by a steam locomotive on a trestle. The final sequence before the kids jump is one of my favorite pieces of cinematography. The entire world behind those boys seems filled with a thundering train.  The suspense felt by that movie’s audience offers a glimpse into what was about to happen to me.

The air horn screams  it’s full agonizing glory. The ground is quaking at a frequency that makes my legs numb below the knees and I start to have the first feelings of panic. I’m in uncharted waters and my brain is screaming for me to jump. In response to such preposterous notions I extend my left arm at the screaming yellow cat and raise my middle finger to the heavens.

I don’t have time to turn my head to scan for onlookers, A darting glance to the left tells me that all is well. No pesky motorists or policemen to louse up what is sure to be a glorious train dodge. A look upward shows me that the engineer is screaming at me while tugging on the lanyard which is unleashing Gabriel’s trumpet straight into my brain. His rider is now more or less standing up waving both arms in the same sweeping motion as before.

Now my mother had never taught me to always leave the house with clean underwear(probably because she didn’t want to do the extra laundry) but even at my tender age I know that if I didn’t move real soon, it would be a moot point. This thing was on top of me and I was about to die. Would it hurt? Would I hear or feel the impact? Would Jesus be waiting just on the other side of the yellow cat that was quickly becoming all encompassing in this young boy’s field of vision?

As the leviathan crosses the final 25 yards something in my mind snaps. I have reached a complete sensory overload. The noise is so loud I can no longer hear. The ground shakes so that I feel as though I am truly levitating and all fear is gone. A calm such as I’ve haven’t known before or since envelopes me. Thirty five years of introspection leads me to believe that this is the one moment where my brain actually stopped. That is to say while striking a defiant pose in the face of instant doom, I found peace.

My friends never believe this part of the tale. I suppose it remains between me, those poor men in the cab of the GP-35 and our Maker.  I held my body in check until I could no longer see the engineers which meant they could no longer see me. From their perspective I had vanished under the hood of the engine. The railing on the front and the coupler preceding the beast came into view and I knew I had miscalculated yet still I held. I felt a wind on my face and whether you care to believe I was feeling the hand of my guardian angel or the knuckle of air being displaced by the locomotive, the effect was the same. The wind propelled be into action.  I pushed off with my dominant leg and leapt a couple of feet to the right and dropped down off the ballast maybe eighteen inches or so. With my hand to God, I swear the train passed me before my feet hit the ground.

Having barely reacquainted myself with Terra Firma I bent down and grabbed a rock in each hand to fire off at the engine. I looked up to acquire my target and what I saw made me drop the stones back to the ground.

Staring down at me from the rearward facing window of the locomotive was a look of such malice that for an instant, real fear clouded the mania coursing through my body.  This guy didn’t want to tell my parents, or the police about what I had done. He wanted to have his way with me and toss my corpse into the swamp 50 feet away. Our eyes remained locked as the momentum of his train propelled him mercifully away from me at 60MPH.

So how does this relate to a 41 year old ADHD nightmare? Simple. I spent the years 1978-1998 chasing the dragon, trying to relive a millisecond in time when I wasn’t thinking about 10 things at once. Metal concerts, consuming enough booze and drugs to kill a couple of elephants, driving at speeds well north of 100MPH while occasionally getting all four wheels of my vehicle off the ground are symptoms of a condition I didn’t know by it’s name until the age of 28. That’s 2 decades almost to the day of the most reckless behavior I could engage in to simply feel respite from the maddening cycle of never ending consciousness.

The psychologist who worked me up indicated that most people who score as high as me on the screening test usually don’t live to be my age. That just made me chuckle. I had lied on half the questions to not make the lady who was to save my life think I was looking to bail on her.

Fast forward a dozen years and we have a boy and girl in the 6th grade. They have grown up at my side and experienced a miniscule version of the impulsivity and frustration that accompanies my condition. They also have brilliant minds and are two of the most polite, funny,  kind and benevolent children I have ever met.

Since ADHD is hereditary and afflicts predominantly intelligent women, you can imagine my alarm as my sweet baby girl grows into a young lady. I see her walking in slow motion with her head down and I want to cry because I know what lies ahead and understand more than she the role I played in her impending struggle.  She told her mom recently that she can’t make her brain slow down at bedtime.  I laugh off that indictment by imagining me putting “Riders On The Storm’ onto her iPod. Her comment would most assuredly be, “Dad, what the hell is that?”

My heart lifts when I see her pick up book after book and devour their contents like a stoner with a five pound bag of Dorritos. This little girl is an intellectual force of nature and is so much more balanced  than her dad will ever be. Where she will probably never be called “Rain Man” like her father, I can’t wait to see the possibilities her mind unlocks. It truly gives me hope for the future.

Directly opposite my location at the Joie de Verve sculpture and across Greenwich was the rising hulk of 4 World Trade Center. These rotten people were throwing their pity party a literal stone’s throw away from the World Trade Center reconstruction site. Whoever chose this location adjacent to the object of America’s heartbreak should have been ashamed of themselves.

I stepped over supine bodies wrapped in sleeping bags, tarps and whatever a person uses for insulation against the encroaching winter season. Given the media coverage and what I had seen on Twitter, there should have been a whole lot of fighting and fornicating going on. To my relief, I saw neither.

Walking along the southern edge of the park I hear the sounds of intoxicated people strumming guitars and singing a never ending melody of sentence fragments and jumbled lyrics. I stop and give my ubiquitous, “How ya’ doin?” To my surprise, I am greeted with warm, albeit stoned smiles and pleasant greetings. I whip out my video camera and asked the group what they would tell my children about the world.

At this point I can feel the paparazzi’s strobes searing my retinas as I walk out with my Oscar for best independent documentary of making a wasted kid look stupid video category. It is in the bag, these guys are going to get me a million hits on youtube and make me a thousandaire. Easy Street, here I come.

The first person I spoke with responded that the greedy, corrupt people in control of the financial system needed to be removed from power and replaced with more ethical leadership. If that happened, my kids could look for a brighter future. Hey pal, start stammering. You’re wrecking my doc.

Then a young kid named Mark spoke with me for a few minutes about how he was told to go to college and now there are no jobs waiting. I explained to Mark that my wife and I had been paying $1,700 per month since 1997 for her medical school loans and it was a tough sell for me that college loans for the current generation should be erased. Find a bottom level, lousy job to get your foot in the door and with hard work, you will draw the attention of the people who can offer advancement in their company. Mark indicated that he was currently working as a janitor and tattooing people for extra money. I again feel as though personal bias may have clouded my judgement as the THC had clouded the judgement of this young man.

It turns out that Mark was a Psychology major.  I offered him two pieces of advice. First, if you invested 4 years and one hundred thousand dollars in an education that did not prepare you for the world, perhaps you should be occupying your alma mater. Don’t hate the bank that loaned you the money to get a college degree.  Mark’s bloodshot eyes opened a bit and he said,”You’re right.” My next suggestion was for Mark to look into the possibility of loan forgiveness by working in a mental health clinic in an under served area. Such opportunities exist for physicians and Mark said he would investigate the possibility of him taking on such an endeavor. I thanked these young people for their time and walked away seeing a glimmer of hope in their eyes.

I then talked to a gentleman named Alan about everything from his growing up on the Lower East Side to what him and I thought would be needed for these kids to get their act together. When I offered to buy Alan a cup of coffee to ward off the night’s chill, a young man who I had assumed was sleeping asked me to get him some juice. As I was thinking the moocher should go to hell, I heard my grandmother’s voice telling me that Jesus loved him too. Sure pal, I’ll get you a juice.

On to the other side of the park where a much scarier, far more dangerous crowd was lurking. Everything from vagrants, homeless people and cranked up anarchists circled me like a school of sharks. Happening upon a candlelit table with a handmade ‘Eat The Rich’ sign I fired up the Flip and asked these youngsters the same questions. What do my kids have to look forward to? Who were your heroes growing up? What is the end game of your movement?

At the end of my conversation a young man named David arrived and began interjecting his ideas into the dialogue. The second I told the people I had been filming they sounded like Glenn Beck, they split and I spent about an hour talking with David. It turns out he had graduated from welding school and wasn’t interested in working anywhere for $8 per hour. You have to start somewhere kid. Holding out for $15-$20 per hour will get you nowhere.

Pointing to the WTC job site across the street I asked David if he had solicited for a job. No? There is opportunity. Even if you are turned away, pester the workers about where a young man can go to fill out an application. Keep pestering people, indicating your eagerness to work and sooner or later, someone will crack the door open for you. It is then the individual’s responsibility to shove the door open, prove value to the company and earn a decent wage.

I left David with the same glimmer of hope in his eyes I had seen earlier from Mark and the others. That started my thought process that some of these kids were not bad people. They were overwhelmed at the prospect of a cold world and were feeling helpless. I can relate to that feeling.

 I drove home the morning of October 26th with a new perspective on the whole #Occupy movement. I figure one third vagrants, one third anarchist punks who couldn’t survive a day in their lawless utopia and the final third scared kids who can’t imagine a meaningful future comprise the makeup of this movement. The scared kids have an opportunity to be persuaded by good ideas and encouragement.  We turn our backs on these future leaders at our own peril.

Two nights later, Twitter was abuzz with posts indicating the police were moving in to clear Zucotti and there was going to be violence. I thought of the young men and women I had met and was overwhelmed by the urge to drive the 60 miles back to Manhattan and encourage these people to leave peacefully. There was no need to end up with a skull fracture and a felony conviction at the behest of chicken hawks exploiting their hopelessness.

Back through the Holland straight to the trophy mosque and my awaiting parking spot,  past the Freedom Tower, across Greenwich and I was once again standing in Zucotti Park. The tension was palpable as I walked amongst the sleeping and the stoned. I was looking for Alan, Mark, David and the others in some vain attempt to change their minds and plead with them to not throw their futures away. To my relief, there was no violence and I couldn’t find anyone whom I had come to engage with a message of encouragement and hope.

I strolled up to the information desk near the Joie du Verve and engaged a man who reminded me of my father in another pleasant conversation. Brian and I couldn’t have been farther apart politically given the fact he was wearing an ACLU hat and I was wearing my Harley leather jacket. Again the sharks circled in my peripheral vision as I claimed my status as a conservative in the middle of a Socialist movement. The fact that I am a large man capable of intimidating spoiled kids with an ice cold stare probably discouraged any would be shouters from interrupting my conversation. The meth heads were busy watching a Livestream feed of the Occupy Oakland protestors fighting with police and did not pose an immediate threat.

Brian and I spent the next hour talking about our childhoods and how a blue collar man could afford to provide for his family. Those days and those jobs are gone and kids need to adapt to a service oriented world until we can get America back to being a manufacturing nation once again. It turns out that righties and lefties have a great deal in common and can engage in civil conversation regardless of what the media shoves down our throats.

I told Brian my reason for trekking into the city again while my family slept and he was genuinely moved. When I left, Brian stood up, shook my hand and thanked me several times for caring enough about the future of this great nation to dissuade people from resorting to violence. Once again, I drove home a changed man.

I don’t feel the least bit sorry for these people. I do feel there is a great opportunity for educated, helpless citizens to become contributing members of society. Most of those I met spoke of tax reform, Social Security and Medicaire reform being cornerstones to fixing America’s woes. How could such conservative principles be lurking in the minds of children being used by progressives?

Question all that you see on TV, internet news and social networking sites. The amount of misinformation out there clouds the judgement.  Experience situations for yourself and you will be left with a more hopeful impression of America’s future. There are more good people out there than you are being led to believe.

 A simple act of kindness from millions of people will effectively negate the deeds of a few thousand revolutionaries. Cast the light of goodness upon seditious people, and they will scurry back into the shadows from where they came.