Skip to main content

All I'm askin'

Is for a little respect.

I think one problem with people today is that they lost respect for others. That is why we have the language problems I discussed in my last post.

The death penalty was carried out in Ohio today. Some think it's a deterrent to crime. I think a bigger deterrent would be to teach children some good old fashioned respect. And applying the board of education to the seat of learning wouldn't hurt either, at least not in the long run.

Catering to the least common denominator as your audience and dissing anyone who wishes to disagree with what you do certainly isn't respect. Remember you reap what you sow. You plant disrespect, you will harvest disrespect.

Sometimes we promote disrespect when we talk to young people. I've been guilty of this in the past. Teenagers will say hi Mr. Jones, or hello Mrs. Smith. They will reply, call me John, or please call me Mary. Mrs. Smith makes me feel old. Instead you should compliment their parents for doing a good job of rearing them.

I have been haunted for the past 32 years of something that happened after I graduated from high school that maybe disrespect from students, including myself helped cause.

When I was a senior at Highland, I was in a senior math class taught by a first year teacher. His name was Mr. McCormick. We started out by calling him Cy, short for Cyrus, the inventor of the reaper. Well for the last period Senior Math class, that was one of the mildest things we called him. We took him to the limit including using every curse word known to man. Some carried it further than that. One person even kicked the fender of his car in. I spent more than my fair share of time in the hall during that period. I had even heard Mr. McCormick was reduced to crying because of what was done to him.

The following spring, I came home from work one day and my brother showed me the paper. Mr. McCormick had jumped off a bridge in Akron. I was told he had other issues, but I wonder if we had attempted to show some respect if maybe we could have prevented it. I say we because, in this case I was part of a mob mentality.

I think of this often.

Comments

Anonymous said…
That is a powerful story. Good one there, WIXY.

You hit it on the head with respect. I have had my fair share of students who "pop off" and see nothing wrong with it. I think because we live in a time where it's been seen as ok to challenge authority but these kids don't understand that there is a proper time and place to challenge authority instead of personally insulting the teacher or making a scene in front of the class. I always tell the class about the proper time/place thing.

One of my favorite teachers in high school at Massillon ran a tight ship in class when I was there. I respected him tremendously. Unfortunately, times change and so did the students. Supposedly, this teacher had enough and one day, just left school, never to come back again. He walked out after having 30+ years in.

Popular posts from this blog

Expand My Territories

Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain." And God granted his request. 1 Chronicles 4:10 NIV The verse above is commonly referred to as the Prayer of Jabez. I was impressed to find my copy of the book written by Bruce Wilkinson and read it again. Some recent happenings prompted me to reflect upon how my territories have been expanded. The Lord has been blessing me and I have really not deserved these blessings. The past several years, I have been sharing my poetry with my friends on Facebook. I also share the poems with others by writing them on index cards. These are usually received with smiles and people telling me that I should write a book. For years, I have been under the belief that poets and composers achieve the greatest fame after they start decomposing.  The last year or so, I have shared my poems with some best selling author...

Post 800: Time to chat

Hi Guys, It's hard to believe that this is post number 800 for this blog. I started this blog out of my desire to communicate. Since radio and television is becoming more and more automated and less and less personal, I'm glad I made the decision to go in this direction as it has given me many blessings. When I first decided to write my musings, a friend from the radio and television boards who goes by the name of newsnomore, told me not to be discouraged if I didn't get any readers. The fact that I did in the early going made me surprised and grateful that anyone was enjoying what I wrote. I've had people tell me that maybe it wasn't meant for me to ever be in radio, that maybe my calling was blogging. Nowadays I think blogging makes for better two way conversation than terrestrial radio, especially the way I do it, non confrontational. The closest I come from any confrontation is the innocent digs that Pat and I shoot at each other. On an average day I get betwee...

From a "Battleground State"

I am going to make this one short and sweet. I live in Ohio, in this election season, one of the so called "Battleground states," a state crucial for any candidate presidential hopes. Of course we have had many visits from presidential and vice presidential candidates. Other blogs have dissected both campaigns so I will not. The only questions I have is will the promises made by either of these candidates exclusive to these states be fulfilled, or will they prove only to be hot air?