Finding Balance

When I was in college I knew a well balanced young man. He could walk down a three inch diameter hand rail like a genuine tight rope walker. He would leap into the air and perch sideways on the rail. After he was steady, he would turn ninety degrees, facing the length of the rail, and he would walk the 20 foot length, hands outstretched to keep his balance.

I thought it was an accomplishment to walk down a telephone pole sized traffic barrier in the parking lot of the local park. This friend topped that. I think he was a distant relative of the Wallendas.

He had what we all need -- balance.

Lately I seem to be able to stumble across any floor. But it isn’t that kind of balance we really need. It is that fine line between two extremes in ideals or actions. That is why the two party political system works so well. The polar opposites of liberal and conservative thoughts balance each other. Neither is right, neither is wrong. One is just as far from the truth as the other, and thus, they balance each other.

Let me use me and my wife as an example. She is drop dead gorgeous, I am ugly. She is a genius, I am not. I have an amazing sense of humor that she doesn’t appreciate. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

Now someone is going to say, “But aren’t you alike too?” Well of course we are. There are certain moral absolutes that we both hold to, and in that way we are similar. If balance were required in all areas of the human condition then medical doctors would all be married to serial killers, police officers would wed bank robbers and drug dealers, dentists would marry soft-drink executives, and the Robertson boys (from Duck Dynasty) would all be married to vegetarians.

Let me challenge you to look for examples of balance in your neck of the woods and let me share one more example of balance with you. Last week was break from school here in our neck of the woods. Middlest came home with a huge packet of homework to do for her AP History class. Middlest had twenty-five hand-written pages to turn in, and she didn’t think she had completed the entire assignment. Two of her classmates, twin sisters, spent thirty hours on the same assignment.

I was flabbergasted and frustrated at the amount of work she was expected to do while on break. I fumed and asked, “What have you been doing in class?”

Middlest replied with that wry droll smile and wit she is famous for, “Watching movies.”

Yes folks, balance at work.

The first week of school: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

My very first ever blog post was about confusing technological phrases. In that post, I mentioned that Eldest, who was then in High School, was taking Spanish as her foreign language. Now she is in college and is majoring in English and Spanish. She has the same professor I had when I went back to finish my degree. The professor doesn’t know Eldest and I are related, and that is a good thing. She is also taking English Literature with the same professor I had in college. He knows she is my daughter, and that isn’t a good thing, but I hope he doesn’t hold it against her.

 Middlest, who was a freshman, was taking Latin. I originally thought it was so she could talk to Latvians, but apparently since Latin is a dead language, she wants to talk to dead people. Some time ago she took the National Latin Exam and won some sort of metal; it was either gold, silver, aluminum, or latinium. This year Middlest has elected to continue with taking Latin, and in addition she is taking Spanish, starting in Spanish 2, rather than Spanish 1. When her teacher explained something to her, another student stated they already knew that. The teacher replied that they had a Latin Scholar in class who hadn’t taken the first year of Spanish and needed a little extra explanation. Some of the students responded, “What is a scholar?” Middlest, as she related the story, simply shook her head, put it in her hand and said, “Oh heaven! Bless their poor souls.”


Littlest was taking French and continues to do well. About her teacher for Advanced Placement World History, we are a little suspect. She asks questions like, “Does anyone know where the glossary in the textbook is?” and “How would I use the table of contents?” These questions both exasperate and worry Littlest. She is concerned that if “the teacher doesn’t know the answers to these simple questions, what is she going to do when she has to teach us about Ibn Battuta and his impact on the world view and his insights into lifestyles of the peoples of the early 14th century?”


Littlest was thrilled to announce that after 7 days of classroom instruction, her History teacher is giving a quiz. When I asked what period of history the  quiz was going to cover she replied, “The past week and a half and all she has talked about is class room rules and the difference between taking a regular history class and an Advanced Placement history class. She has yet to teach us anything, so the quiz is going to be less of a history quiz and more of a current non-event quiz.”