Month: August 2006

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Don’t Marry a ‘Professional Woman’ — Part deux

40 years of liveing with 12 cats

 

I guess I could have said,”don’t marry a professional man”, but this was the title of an article in Forbes by Michael Noer that caused a whole lot of ladies to get their panties in a twist.

Noer’s article states some facts — well known to social scientists, — which are viewed as a call to arms by the masses of women who think that they ‘can have it all’ without any tradeoffs. Funny how life is full of tradeoffs.

Many of us — old enough to remember — can hear the shrill voices of the liberal sages telling us that if a woman works… it will really be okay… and her children will actually benefit from the separation… because she will return ( ta da!) to the home and give her family ‘QUALITY time.’ I also remember when one couldn’t criticize the concept of ‘quality time’ without being accused of being an facist islamic fundamentalist…. or the equivalent.

Today, we realize that the much revered concept of ‘quality time’ is actually a crock. Nothing good came out of it. Women, men and families were not prepared for the challenges. Children went adrift, families suffered and many relationships disolved overnight. 

I think this definition  of ‘quality time’ makes a lot more sense in today’s realities:

QUALITY TIME: the time you spend with your family when you are not otherwise ignoring them.

The same is true with your ‘significant other’. There is no such thing as quality time…only time. The less time you spend with anyone, the easier it is to grow apart. Hmmm… Continue reading “Don’t Marry a ‘Professional Woman’ — Part deux”

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Yeah, baby… trust meeee! ….. I’m taking precautions

Trust me..... please!
Have you heard that one?

How many guys have become a daddy on the word of someone who either didn’t care or planned for someone else paying for 23 years of child support?

Get this concept… male contraception. Now, we’re giving guys the opportunity to lie, too!

In LiveScience.com , a person wrote an article to help men with contraception… unfortunately, the author was a woman …. and that seems like a conflict of interest to me. 

Hmmmm…. It’s like listening to a bunch of women talk about how much easier having a vasectomy is rather than having one’s tubes tide. Riiiiiight! The “V” word is too close to the infamous “C” word… and the only side effect is that they guy gains enough weight to earn a parking place at the super market. Oh… you didn’t know that?

Well, it may all sound like a good deal for women who would like to be free of  responsibility… but it is important to remember, ladies, when all is said and done… the guy goes home and he’s never pregnant.

Roger Freberg

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the Parent — the first and most important teacher

Hey Guys!
Have you ever noticed some of the criticisms directed at parents from the halls of academia? Parents are supposedly ‘too involved’ with their adult college children, too interventionist with their children’s teenage friends and appear to be looking over the shoulders of their child’s grade and middle school teachers?

Why do parents do this?

Obviously, because getting involved gets the results all parents want… better performance. It reminds me of the saying-or at least my version of it:

” if you let the village raise your child…
don’t be surprised if you end up with the village idiot.”

1997 Laguna Middle School Throwers

Most parents — if they try a bit — can find ways in which they can teach their children or help them ‘be all they can be.’ Ask youself: what do I know that could help my kids reach the next level?

Were you an athlete? artist? musician? good in math? Or are you a good observor of people? Can you protect them from ‘bad associations”? Can you offer advice? Can you help them avoid the mistakes we all made at their ages?

I was an athlete, and when my children decided that they wanted to participate, I offered to help them learn some of the skills, send them to camps and pop for whatever equipment they needed. The parent is the support unit… but the child has to do the hard work. As a ‘supporter’ you can teach, cheer and offer encouragement when they don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The photograph you see above is from 1997. I volunteered to teach some young male and female middle schoolers how to throw the shot and discus… part of the fun was coming up with a design for our ‘shirt’. It stated ‘Laguna Throwers tc’ (tc stands for ‘track club’). I really wasn’t feeling too good here, physically, I weighed about 427 lbs and I was about to go into a diabetic shock … in a couple of years. That is a story in and of itself. Anyway, it was a way to help my daughter… in a way that was meaningful to her…. the rest was history.

So, don’t worry about ruffling a few feathers… after all, none of your child’s friends or teachers have to live with your kid… if things go bad. Studies show that a man in your child’s life is what they need to stay focused, besides, if someone needs to be the ‘bad guy’, it might just as well be you! Remember, your time and investment to get your kids on the right road early on when they are young is so much less than waiting for a problem to develope when they get older…… then, it takes so much more effort and so much more money to help them get back on that road if they ended up following a unhappy path.

Good Luck,

 

Roger Freberg

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Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports? … are you really surprised?

Roger Freberg UCLA 1971-1974 NCAA Runner-Up Discus, Pac 8 Champion in the Discus and Runner-up in the Shot Put, UCLA Discus RecordholderThe story of athletes ‘from the dawn’ of time attempting to enhance their performance is a colorful history. Recorded history speaks of ancient Greek athletes munching on animal testicles to extract testosterone or athletes taking small doses of various poisons as ‘stimulants.’ In 1927, the Nobel Prize was won by a German — Heinrich Weiland — discoverer of ‘steroids’ and athletics has never been the same …until now.

Today, there are rumors of ‘gene doping’. Simply stated, gene doping is the insertion of a performance gene into the athlete via a virus. So far this has proven to be a dangerous process with some non athletic deaths from introducing genes into the human body. The one of the genes likely to be introduced is is associated with EPO. The other gene — associated with certain rare strong athletes — is a form of non fatal muscular dystrophy.

Trying to ‘get an edge’ over a competitor — by any means — is certainly not new and working to provide ‘ a level playing field’ is certainly a worthy but somewhat unrealistic effort. The ‘solution’ to this problem will come from the athlete. The question each athlete has to ask themselves is how good do I want to become and at what cost? There are plenty of athletes who appear to be suffering from the effects of anabolic steroid use of 20 or 30 years ago. Some of the apparent problems that have developed with athletes who dined on steroids are liver & kidney problems and joint replacement and death. Some of these same fellows often find themselves in wheel chairs. Do they think it was worth it now? Continue reading “Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports? … are you really surprised?”

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Happy 22nd!….. remember ALL your anniversaries

Roger and Laura at 17The 22nd of August means something special to me…. it is our anniversary as a couple. It has been 442 months since Laura and I went on our first date. Yep, we celebrate every month.

How did it begin? Well, I brought Laura to the 1969 USC vs. UCLA football game! I thought that this was the ‘acid’ test…. if she enjoyed this activity… well … she would be ‘perfect’.

Neither Laura or I are perfect…. but we never go to bed mad and we always remember who loves ya. We also enjoy doing a lot of activities together… I have enjoyed helping Laura with some of the challenging topics in her professional life, whether it is cleaning her office or searching the internet for her. It is the simple things we do for each other that are the most endearing.

One of the fun things about having monthly anniversaries…  are monthly reminders of how important each has been to the other over the years. It’s never so busy that one can’t say thanks or bring a flower or offer a kind word. It doesn’t take much to brighten anyone’s day.

Some of my friends have come around to the idea of how nice it would be to have someone around who really — as opposed to pretend — enjoys some of their activities. I think some of my buddies would be willing to even watch the Oscars if their wives would watch the Super Bowl with them. We still enjoy football games, together and as a family!

USC vs. Fresno State Game!

The lesson here to the ladies…. if you are a buddy to your husband… maybe he’ll remember some of the important dates in your life… starting with your birthday.

Roger Freberg