June Column Winner

Teach children well, and they will thrive

By Jeff Mullin, Enid News & Eagle

In 1970, a lifetime ago, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young released an album titled “Déjà Vu.”
One cut on the album, which climbed as high as No. 16 on the Billboard charts, was a soft rock ballad called “Teach Your Children.”
“Teach your children well, their father’s hell did slowly go by. And feed them on your dreams, the one they pick’s the one you’ll know by. Don’t you ever ask them, ‘Why?’ If they told you, you would cry. So just look at them and sigh, and know they love you.”
Today we honor fathers, all of whom are teachers, no matter how they earn their living.
My father, who died just two years after “Teach Your Children,” was released, taught me many things.
He taught me the value of hard work, for one thing. He worked his way through college at what was then Oklahoma A&M, taking classes when he could afford it and then putting his education on hold for long periods while he worked to save money for tuition. As a result, it took him nearly a decade to earn his degree.
We were working on some project or another together once when I told him I was tired and needed a rest.
“Rest all you want, son,” he said, “but remember that while you are resting, no work is getting done.” I decided I could do without a rest.
He taught me how to mow the yard, a lesson I learned by toddling along behind him pushing my toy plastic mower while he groomed the lawn with the real one.
He taught me how to fish, though as a result he didn’t necessarily teach me patience. If the fish weren’t biting, he was ready to move. And if I was catching fish and he wasn’t, we were on to the next spot in a flash.
He taught me how to play golf, and for that I don’t know whether to thank him or blame him, since he hooked me on the most maddening, most frustrating game known to mankind.
He taught me darn near everything, truth be told. He tried to teach me math, incessantly drilling me with addition, subtraction, multi-plication and division flash cards. He tried to teach me chemistry, his chosen profession, but it didn’t stick, much to his chagrin.
But he taught me the important stuff, too, to say please and thank you, to hold a door or a chair for a woman (a bit of chivalry not always appreciated in these modern times), to refer to my elders as sir or ma’am, to call adult visitors Mr. and Mrs. So and So rather than by their first names.
He taught me to respect everyone, regardless of who or what they are, even if they proved unworthy of respect. If that was the case, he taught me to avoid them.
He taught me always to tell the truth and when I didn’t, he taught me the con-sequences of prevarication
So on this Father’s Day, dads, keep in mind that while in real life you might be a doctor, lawyer, farmer or merchant, you are your children’s teacher.
Teach them to be kind, to be generous, to be tolerant, to be understanding. Teach them to follow their dreams, even if they don’t align with yours. Teach them to work hard, but don’t forget how important play is. Teach them to do more than simply make a living, but to make a life.
Teach them that doing something for someone else, whether or not they will or can ever do anything for you in return, is soul-filling.
Teach them to do what is right, and teach them the consequences of doing what isn’t.
And don’t just tell them, show them. Live your life like you hope they will live theirs. They are watching and listening, absorbing lessons like the sand absorbs the waves that wash constantly over the beach.
Oh, and teach them to love. And teach them they are loved, they are worthy, they are valuable, even when the world attempts to convince them they are anything but.
Hopefully you will be in their lives until they have children of their own, and longevity has put its mark on their once-unlined faces and put a silver tint in their once shining hair.
But if not, teach them how to go on without you. Losing a father is akin to an astronaut being cast adrift in the blackness of space, arms akimbo, flailing, falling and flying all at once, desperate for a hand or foothold, struggling to find which way is up.
Happy Father’s Day, teacher. Nice tie, by the way.