Woe from the wise: don't do as I did

[Loren Booda]

Remember your Dad telling you not to make the same mistakes he made? Whether you write as a parent, offspring or both, what admonition inherited from your folks did you ignore anyway?

 

[Evo]

Remember your Dad telling you not to make the same mistakes he made? Whether you write as a parent, offspring or both, what admonition inherited from your folks did you ignore anyway?

My dad never said anything like that, and none to the second question.

 

[wukunlin]

the moment someone becomes your boss they turn into a-holes. And I still got caught off guard by the change in attitude on my 2nd day at work

 

[turbo]

My father gave me precious little advice, though I am looking after him now (from a few miles away). My mother's advice was "be nice".

 

[BobG]

I don't think there was any advice or admonitions I ignored, but...

In response to my reason for something I wanted or wanted to do she did ask me, "If all your friends jumped off a cliff, would you do that, too?"

I just had to be a smart ***! I was kind of regretting that answer as I stood in line with a bunch of crazy military security police getting ready to jump off a 30 foot cliff into a river towards the end of a rafting trip.

But, in retrospect, I'm glad I was a smart *** and I'm glad I jumped off the cliff.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I loved my father intensely and he deserved it. As a child I always wanted to be with him and when I grew up I always wanted to be like him. If he had regrets he never told me what they were.

 

[Moonbear]

I don't think there was anything I outright ignored. My Dad gave sound advice. He didn't usually tell me about mistakes he'd made, but instead taught from things he did right and the benefits of that approach.

 

[turbo]

My father quit HS and joined Airborne to participate in WWII. He at least encouraged me to do well in school and go to college.

He was eventually granted his HS diploma after returning home, but had to take a correspondence course in geometry/trig, so that he could get proficient in layout and fabrication of sheet-metal while I was a kid. I learned from some of his "lessons", but could have benefited from some better advice when I was young.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

My father was a man of very few words [obviously I take after my mother in this regard! ]

I can still quote our "sex talk" verbatim:

[Holding an electrical extension cord] "Do you know why the plug is called "male" and the receptacle is called "female"?

Yes

Okay.

He didn't give much advice.

 

[Drakkith]

There was a great many things my Father taught me. If you talk to me in person, and then talk to my dad you can immediately tell that he raised me. Which just goes to show that genes don't mean everything, as he is actually my stepdad.

 

[Loren Booda]

My father wasn't perfect, but he was a very good man, a hard worker and a survivor of the Depression and WWII. I loved him and still do.

He always wanted for me to be a leader, not a follower, which I mostly realized after giving up pot.

He and my Mom let me learn from my own mistakes.

Sometimes I thought that my parents wanted me to be perfect.

My Dad left the discipline to my Mom, who was a very effective, especially when she cried (once in a blue moon).

 

[Jasongreat]

My father was a man of very few words [obviously I take after my mother in this regard! ]

I can still quote our "sex talk" verbatim:

[Holding an electrical extension cord] "Do you know why the plug is called "male" and the receptacle is called "female"?

Yes

Okay.

He didn't give much advice.

You have a gift for making your point, I see now you inherited it from your father. :D

 

[chiro]

I've found that its a lot easier to appreciate certain kinds of advice when you've already made some major blunders.

Advice is good for people who seek it and appreciate it but it really doesn't help someone when their head is like a giant snowball out of one of those old cartoons just taking it with you until you crash in a most spectacular fashion at the bottom of the hill.

 

[Adyssa]

My dad didn't study a technical degree (ie. engineering) at uni and always wished he had. Instead he did a Telecom traineeship, and later in life, devout Christian that he is, he completed a degree in Theology, taught for a while and then ended up as a technical writer for a company that made spectrometers. Strange journey! His (unheeded) advice to me was to go to uni early and get qualified so I could make a career for myself. I dilly-dallied around and thought I would be a techno DJ and skateboard for the rest of my life, and here I am, 10 years on, at uni trying to get qualified to do something technical!

I imagine my journey will be about as strange as his. Life's amazing. :)