School is Always in Session

“And knowing is half the battle.” I think that’s how all the episodes of G.I. Joe ended. A short, animated “teachable moment” aimed at teaching kids various issues. Things like don’t play with fire, be nice to neighbors, don’t talk to strangers, don’t fall asleep in the backseat during a road trip when your two older brothers are in the front seats with a bag of peanut M&Ms, or you will wake up in a panic with a peanut shoved up your nose (not a peanut M&M, just the peanut after one of your brothers—the oldest, in fact—had sucked the chocolate and the candy coating off). This is why no one in my family questions why I’m in therapy and on various medications!

I think that the news media needs to start including a kiss-off paragraph with teachable moments for their articles. Instead of just covering the news, they can help us learn from the mistakes of others. Since I haven’t seen this done, I thought I’d take the opportunity to pass along a few things I think we should learn from a few recent news stories.

1. Always pay for services rendered. If you enter into a service-for-pay agreement with someone, you pay when the services are fully-rendered. No questions about it. You pay, especially if this service was something you shouldn’t have been doing, and you need to keep it quiet so your wife doesn’t find out. You pay, especially if you are in a foreign country for the sole purpose of ensuring the safety of the most powerful man in the world. You pay, especially if all your friends are also having the same services performed—you don’t want to be the one to ruin the fun for everyone else. You always pay your tab at the bar, you always pay the taxi driver, and you always pay your hooker. (For the record, I have never not paid a hooker.)
   
   
2. Name changes. If you go through the trouble to change your name to something ridiculous like Metta World Peace to distance yourself from your shady, somewhat violent past, you shouldn’t throw a nasty elbow into the face of an opponent. It makes you look like a bigger tool than you already are. “But he said it was an accident….” Was it an accident when, before we were married, my ex-wife stabbed me in the face with a fork? Was it an accident when she once took her shoe off and beat me with it while we were stuck in traffic? If you change your name to Whatever World Peace, you need to be setting a good example and not throwin’ ‘bows. (For the record, I deserved all the physical abuse from my ex-wife. Oh, and a few years ago, I thought about changing my name. I wanted to take control over my life, and I thought having a name of my own choosing would be a good start. But I never thought about a silly name that I could never live up to, such as Jabba Better Husband or Boba Dedicated Employee. No. I proposed “Carrots.” I thought it would be unique and somewhat charming. To this day, my nephew will occasionally call me Uncle Carrots. Always makes me smile.)
   
   
3. When the taxpayers already hate us, don’t make it worse. We Feds have always gotten the stink eye from private-sector employees who think we are overpaid slackers. Add to that a country in a serious economic crisis and a Congress eyeing all of our benefits and staffing levels for ways to make cuts, we aren’t the cool kids on the block right now. So when you’re looking to hold a conference for some employees, you don’t do it in Vegas. You don’t hire magicians and mind readers. You don’t spend more than $800,000 on the conference. You don’t make videos that make light of the Inspector General. (For the record, the most lavish thing that ever happened to me while at a conference was getting a Polaroid photo of me standing next to a guy in a Garfield costume)

What have you learned from recent news or the mistakes of others?