Catching Idle Butterflies

You Might Be A Redneck . . .

As I know you all have been all aflutter with eagerness to discover how my conference went, I will share with you my impressions.

It was one of the best I’ve been to in a while. The speaker, a Professional Land Surveyor and Attorney, spoke with passion and energy, and his points made me think about many things.

As a land surveyor, I deal in numbers; coordinates, bearings and distances, and areas. Included in all that, math is the key to either tie in or place monuments on the ground and see how they fit with the numbers. Never do they match exactly. It drives a mathematical mind like mine a little nutty. However, I manage to convince myself it will never be exact, because there are simply too many variables that come into play that interfere with that exactness. Sometimes it is what it is. Period.

What’s missing even with that attitude is the human element. Land is precious to the person who owns it. People have killed their neighbors over land boundary disputes. The Land Surveyor’s duty is to do his or her level best to prevent that from happening.

We land surveyors sometimes forget that duty; we muddy the waters simply to get the math to work. In the mean time, people are at least spending thousands of dollars they don’t have in court, or killing one another, and for what? To make the numbers add up? How pig-headed is that? Land surveyors take an oath when they accept their state license, and it is not to make sure a survey closes mathematically. No. Much like a doctor it’s to protect the public. These last two days has been a great reminder of that duty.

Most interesting about the speaker was the way he spoke. He’s from Alabama, so he has the typical southern accent. Now imagine Jeff Foxworthy. The speaker didn’t only share the same accent, he had the same inflections when he got excited about something, and his voice rose almost an octave, much like Jeff Foxworthy. He even had a sense of humor, that down-to-earth, people-are-so-very-silly-at-times that made Foxworthy famous. I kept expecting the speaker to pop out a “You might be a redneck” joke.

Onto another subject:

I wasn’t popular in school. In fact, I was the opposite of popular. At the most I had four friends at one time all throughout junior high and high school. In junior high and up until halfway through my junior year, it was difficult to deal with. At one point I had no friends, at least none I could trust my deepest and darkest thoughts with.

Then I fell to a point it was either deal with the fact I would never be liked, or take a darker, more permanent road.

I decided to like myself regardless of whether or not anyone on this planet agreed. I came up with a saying, “The best revenge is to do the exact opposite of what people expect.” People teased me, I laughed with them. They treated me badly, I treated them well. It worked. I didn’t necessarily gain any more friends that way, but they soon stopped teasing me or treating me bad. They mostly ignored me. I accepted that. As a consequence, I expended all my energy on getting the best education I could. I earned the respect of all my teachers, and that in turn helped me like myself even more.

I never again bowed to peer pressure in order to be liked or accepted.

Which is why today I am very disappointed in myself. Yep, I gave into peer pressure. I spent my hard-earned money to be IN. I could have chosen many a different path for fewer dollars, but no, the pressure was simply too much to ignore.

I bought a cell phone. It came in yesterday. I chose Verizon because I know so many, even a few of you, who also have Verizon. I am now a member of those 54 million people also part of the Verizon IN network. That way I can now call them – and you – and neither one of us will use up our precious minutes as we chat.

To those also IN I hope you like and accept me more now even though I bought my way into the group .

To those who aren’t IN, I promise not to snub you or think less of you.

Really. That’s what I’ll use my unused minutes for .

Lastly:

Thank you pencilsoverpens for the lovely and thoughtful Christmas image now gracing my blog!