America getting too smart for its own good

My daughter, 11 and already beginning to sense fatherly failures, asked if I’d be teaching again this year. For three of the past four years I’ve taught creative non-fiction to graduate students at Point Park University in Pittsburgh.

No, I said. I’m done teaching.

“Did you get fired?”

No, it’s impossible to fire someone who doesn’t have a job.

“Why won’t you go back?”

They’re not interested in me. They said I’m no longer qualified.

“Too bad. I know you liked doing it.”

For a split second I thought about launching into a little parental dissertation about the importance of education, but my heart wasn’t in it.

And I don’t want to risk my daughter growing up over-educated like the rest of America.

New state regulations mean I have to on paper be at least be a smidgen smarter than the people I teach and that’s no longer possible.

I was an adjunct professor -- no salary, no benefits, no commitments. It’s the professional equivalent of a one-night stand. And I’m all for that.

The first day was always my favorite. I’d deliberately rush in to the first of 16 three-hour sessions 10 minutes late. Everyone was pissed.

Then looking frantic as a meth chef on deadline, I’d pull out a single sheet of paper and begin stammering: “When . . . I . . . heard . . . I’d . . . be . . . teaching . . . a . . . three ...”

Now imagine those excruciating pauses here: “When I heard I’d be teaching a three hour class I figured the only way I could talk that long for that duration was if I put . . . really . . . really . . . really . . . long . . . pauses . . . between . . . all . . . the . . . words.”

I had them by the end. They knew it was a joke.

My teaching was not. I earned uniformly good student evaluations and have maintained warm friendships with students who still seek my advice.

I think they liked my class because I’m an omnibus of their combined career dreams. Some of them dream of writing books. Some wonder what it would be like to dabble in tabloids. Some are ambitious to land bylines in prestigious magazines like Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Cooking Light, Men’s Health and Playboy.

I’ve done all that.

I loved college, but I’m confident I’d be the same writer I am today if I’d have skipped college and the subsequent student loan burdens and had instead sought a six-month internship under a crackerjack editor.

That was a recurring theme of mine made most emphatic in what I called my little-old-lady-in-the-woods postulate.

It’s about how while we’re engaged in lofty and theoretical discussions about writing, there’s a little old lady in the woods who just woke up today and decided she’s going to be a writer.

She never went to college, studied formal sentence structure or done much of anything but live her happy little life up there in the woods.

“This is the only calling where you don’t need any education. You can’t wake up tomorrow and say, gee, I think today I want to become a doctor, an engineer or even a school crossing guard. But anyone in the world with drive, a good story and a sharp pencil can tomorrow wake up and be a great author.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?”

I’m friends with many successful tradesmen. They repair roofs, unclog drains and fix your furnace when it fritzes.

They don’t talk about working. They work.

I’ve been encouraged to go back to school and earn another degree so I can resume teaching. Most of the people encouraging me to do so are the people who most benefit from all these people going back to school to earn more and more degrees.

They are academics. They think any problem can be solved through additional study.

On paper, America’s never been smarter. Everyone has a B.A., an M.A., an LL.D. or a Ph.Ds in sociology, poli sci or English lit. Many of them are doing honest work in places like Target and Lowes.

We do more thinking than doing and I’m thinking that’s a problem.

Pretty soon we’ll all be some sort of titular doctor fretting over coffee to one another about how there’s no one left who knows how to fix a busted fridge.

So, no, I’ll not incur $12,000 in debt to add another title indicating I know how to write.

If someone wants to see if I know how to write, I don’t show them a resume. I show them this blog.

It would require further study, but I wonder if this over-education is the root of Global Warming.

We’re all being burned out by too many degrees.

Moo! When wine trumps milk

I don’t know how the conversation about milk got started, but it sounded like it was being conducted in a cafeteria full of fourth graders.

“I hate milk!”

“Eww! My mommy made me drink it all the time. Never again!”

But these weren’t 9 year olds. We were old men in an old man’s bar.

Rather than little toddler cartons of milk, we were imbibing Scotch, bourbon, gin, rum and beer! Beer! Beer!

We weren’t drinking these spirits to strengthen our bones. We were drinking spirits to lift our own.

“Beer is living proof that God loves man!” is what sudsy sage Benjamin Franklin said.

You can agree with that philosophical nugget, and still be surprised, as I was, to hear my fellow inebriates expressing such visceral disdain for milk.

They talked about it the way they talk about the Taliban.

They want to see it banished from the face of the earth.

To me it was like hating Girl Scouts.

Milk, the ivory issue of the breast -- and I know these guys love breasts. We watch cooking shows most every afternoon and, guaranteed, it isn’t so we can learn how to expertly poach zucchini. Believe me, values voters wouldn’t want to want to know what’s going on in the minds of some of these guys when Giada de Laurentis starts pounding her chicken.

And please don’t mistake that example for deviant behavior. Culinary chicken pounding happens all the time in even Presbyterian kitchens.

Me, I’m perfectly at peace with milk. I feel about it the way I do the vast rainbow of my fellow man. This puts me at odds with the Montana GOP which this weekend declaring its intent to make all homosexual behavior criminal.

I don’t understand how some men and women are gay and others are not. But I know they face many situational obstacles that can, for some, lead to prolonged bouts of sadness over their lifestyles.

In that regard, they are not unlike Chicago Cub fans.

I adore bourbon, tequila, vodka, oaky cabernets and buttery chardonnays -- you name it.

Many years ago I had an unfortunate encounter with Southern Comfort and we’ve never made peace. But I don’t hate it. I simply try and avoid it because I know it’s likely to make me vomit.

Again the Cub fan analogy applies.

But there are many times when a big frosty glass of milk really hits the spot. I often have it over Lucky Charms and with other breakfast staples.

This might strike some as odd, but I love milk with pasta. I’ve had many spaghetti meals that involved beer, milk and water.

I admit it must have been awkward when the three of them got together in my stomach. It would be like a Jew, a Muslim and that Koran-burning Florida whack job getting stuck in the same elevator.

There are many studies that say milk is essential for strong bone growth.

Not surprisingly, these studies are funded and promoted by -- ta! da! -- our nation’s dairy interests!

I do know one person who is going to expire from a milk deficiency.

That would be my wife.

She’s admirably conscientious about her health and that of those around her.

But our oldest daughter absolutely detests milk and it drives Val crazy. I fear our efforts to infuse her with the daily recommended amount of calcium will backfire and that one day she’ll be like the guy three stools down.

“Yeah,” he said, “my mom used to make me drink it every day. I couldn’t stand it. Just hated it. I haven’t had a single glass of milk in 27 years since I left home. Won’t even have it my house.”

In maybe only this one regard, this flabby soon-to-be candidate for a liver transplant, is exactly like one of the most fanatically fit men in history.

He’s Jack LaLanne.

I interviewed him for a Men’s Health story about six years ago.

He turns 96 next week. Expect him to do something remarkable.

When he turned 70 in 1984, he fought strong winds and currents to swim 1.5 miles across Long Beach Bay. He did it while handcuffed and shackled.

It gets better.

He did it while towing 70 boats with 70 people on board.

Talking with him was one of the most amazing and euphoric conversations I’ve ever had. The man’s a marvel.

It was so amazing I said to him, ‘Hey, my wife’s right here. Will you mind telling her something inspirational?”

No problem.

They talked for 10 minutes. Then Val set the phone down, drove straight to Pittsburgh, dove into the Allegheny River and towed with her teeth a coal barge 15 miles upriver to New Kensington.

God bless him, the man’s that positive and uplifting.

In fact, I can only recall one negative comment.

And it was about milk.

“French people live the longest and they have wine with lunch and dinner every day. Americans drink milk instead. Milk is for a suckling calf. How many creatures still use milk after they’re weaned? Just one. Man. I’d rather see people drink a glass of wine then a glass of milk any time of the day.”

So if the world’s most fit man hates milk, there’s only one thing to do.

Wine for breakfast!

Any fitness advice that involves increasing our convivial alcohol consumption is something that simply must be milked.