Life Lesson # 2 “Lift the Toilet Seat Up”

I have never lived with a woman who complained about me leaving the toilet seat up. It has never happened, despite the famous controversy about putting the seat down. I can also safely say that the women of America want the toilet seat up. If you’re a woman, you may not realize you want the seat up, however trust me you do.

You see I work in a particular portion of the health care industry, where part of my job is to observe men urinate into a small plastic cup. I have to tell you this is not the most thrilling part of my job. However like we tell our clients, we drug test you because we care.

When I observe men place their specimen in the little plastic cup, I am shocked at how many do not lift the seat up in the restroom. I am also shocked at how many men have real bad aim. I mean really bad aim.

Seat Down + Bad Aim= “Ew Disgusting!”

When I was a little kid, my mother taught me how to lift the toilet seat up, and she was adamant that it got lifted up. Once again as mother raising three bears, she knew what she was doing. She was saving herself and my future wife a lifetime of misery.

Once again there is a bigger issue at work, the issue of courtesy. If I think only of myself, I am not much good to anyone else. The truth is that I am not much good to myself either. We need other people, because I know my brain will spin out of control unless I have someone else to ground me and bring me back to earth. When I don’t at least make an attempt to be courteous of other people, I am committing myself to a life of isolation and calling a volleyball, “Wilson.”

Lesson # 1 “Clean Up After Yourself”

My mother raised three bears, and was married to a bear, and now I wonder how she coped. Well I know how she coped, and it wasn’t pretty let me tell ya. Anyhow, one day after dinner, I got up from the table to go watch “Wild Kingdom” on TV, and my mother yelled, “Hey, get back here!” She had her index finger pointed down at a small puddle of milk that was left at my place at the table.

A possible solution may have been to convert our kitchen into a huge dishwasher, where the doors could be shut, soap loaded, buttons pushed, and the dishes, table, floor, walls, countertops, and all the areas where we left food after we ate we get washed down. Kind of like a European public restroom, where the whole works gets washed and sanitized, before the next user comes in. If only we could have done this, it would have saved me a lecture.

“You don’t ever, ever, walk away from the table and leave a mess for someone else to clean up.” Maybe it was fear, maybe it was a desire to please my mother, but probably it was a craving to get back to “Wild Kingdom,” to watch Marlon put Jim in front of a herd of stampeding buffalo and watch him run. I went back, got a rag from the sink, and wiped up the puddle of milk.

The Life Lesson Learned is taking responsibility for your mistakes is important.

I would love to say, really my wife would love to say, that I learned this lesson perfectly and I always clean up after myself and take responsibility for my actions. The truth is I don’t, and I have dirty clothes on the bedroom floor, and other housekeeping neglect to show for it. However, I do know that it is my responsibility to do it. The greater lesson is that I know the right thing to do is to take responsibility for when I do something wrong. Blaming other people or shirking my responsibility has always led me to major problems, and taking responsibility has always led me to peace. However I am still a bear with furniture a work in progress.

The Purpose

When we were on Mackinac Island over Labor Day Weekend, my wife, son and I took a horse driven carriage ride around the island. At the end of the ride the driver stuck out his hand in a handshake motion to me and I shook his hand and told him I enjoyed the ride. My wife then started giggling and said, "For God sakes Ed, give him a tip!" I apologized to the driver gave him a tip and told him, "without my wife I would have no class, I'd be just a bear with furniture." The comedienne, Rita Rudner made that line famous, that men who lived alone were "Bears with furniture."

It has occurred to me that I have learned a lot of valuable life lessons from women in my life. Some through lectures, some through watching women do really smart things, some through asking for help, and some through getting hurt by women. So my purpose of this blog is to detail life lessons that women have taught me and pass them on to you!