Bullshit: A Parent's Best Friend

We’ve all heard the saying, “With age comes wisdom.” It’s an adage that’s been passed down for generations. It’s had quite the staying power and probably always will. And why not? It sounds good. Seems hard to argue with.

But at the time you heard it, you should have immediately become suspicious because you most certainly heard it from someone older than you. Parents are particularly prone to believing we have not only knowledge, but values that we must share with our offspring.

Parents of every generation think there are certain “absolutes” they must instill in children in order for the children to turn out as well-rounded as the adults instilling the absolutes. Not only do we believe that certain absolutes must be passed along, we are absolutely certain of their importance.

The kind of absolutes vary from parent to parent, but all parents have at least some. Patience is a virtue, competition teaches the value of trying hard and how to accept failure, we all must learn to compromise, etc…

All bullshit.

We tell ourselves that sharing these nuggets of wisdom is an important duty as parents, but really it just makes us feel important. Necessary, even. That doing this equates to good parenting. The reality is we just want our kids to suffer the same way we did as kids, which is really more questionable parenting than good parenting.

For instance, when it’s time to eat dinner, my kids want to pause the show they’re watching and pick it back up at the same spot after dinner’s over. Because kids can do that now. I, however, tell them they can’t pause it, that they need to just turn TV off. I usually follow that up with, “Missing a show while eating dinner with your family won’t kill you.”

Well, a lot of things won’t kill them. Pausing the show and starting it where they left off after they’re finished eating won’t kill them either. Or me. So why do I care? For a very good reason, actually. Because if kids never have to miss a TV show due to meals or homework or bedtime, they’ll never learn how to compromise.

Riiiiiiiight.

I’m pretty sure I care because I didn’t get to pause live TV when I was a kid. If a show I liked came on during dinner, I had to miss it. And damnit, missing that show made me the man I am today. The type of man who tells his children they don’t get to enjoy advancements in technology.

What if parents did this in the early 1900s, like bypass a trip to the dentist or turn down the cure for something in order to instill some misguided principle?

“Oh, we’re all just going to skirt death now? What kind of message does it send to say, ‘Take care of yourself and you can live longer?’ People are going to completely dismiss the fact that they’re going to die. Not only will everyone live well into their 40s, they’ll enjoy it!”


We want our kids to grow up the way we grew up, and we think what was good enough for us should be good enough for them. People tell themselves, “That’s how I was raised and I turned out fine.” Problem is, EVERYONE thinks they turned out fine.

People who honk their car horns in stop-and-go traffic think they turned out fine. Degenerate gamblers who can’t keep a job or a relationship or a clean rap sheet think they turned out fine. Fans who get thrown out of sports arenas filled with thousands of other people who are drinking and swearing and making threats against the players think they turned out fine. People who repeatedly tell their story about the time they were abducted by aliens think they turned out fine. They think they turned out fine despite the abduction! If you asked them, they’d do it all over again. “Alien abductions build character.”

Guys who take dick pics think they really turned out fine. Usually they feel quite confident in their exceptionalism.

Charles Manson thinks he turned out fine. And apparently he got a woman to believe the same thing.

People who videotape themselves holding a rocket launcher in one hand and a burning picture of a world leader in the other think they turned out fine. EVERYBODY thinks they turned out fine! Somebody’s got to be wrong.

Kids would probably be better off if most parents raised them in a completely opposite manner from which they were raised (I’m looking at you, Philadelphia Eagles fans). Do you ever look back at your childhood and think, “I wish my dad forced me to play baseball with a potato instead of a ball like he had to do when he was a kid. My life would be so much better today” ?

Parents mean well. We try to do right by our kids and it helps to think that we are. But come on. Remember the advice about dealing with a bully? “The best way to get a bully to leave you alone is to stand up to him.” Well what percentage of the population of Silicon Valley do you think is made up of bully pummelers?

I don’t advocate not teaching kids. We have to teach them. They are so, so dumb. But raising children has a way of making you feel like you don’t know anything either. Because you don’t. So let your kids teach you too. And let go of some of those principles that you try to instill out of stubbornness more than anything else.

"You should always tell the truth." Ok, Mother Theresa.

Help Yourself

Help Yourself

What’s this?

Help Yourself, it appears to say.

A second, more deliberate glance to ensure I’m not confused.

I am not.

Help Yourself

In cursive, no less. Delightful, bubbly letters joined together to make a sweet, almost smiling, offer.

Help Yourself

Oh really?

Help Yourself

Help. My. Self.

Hmmm.

It is indeed an enticing offer. One I’ve seen before, however.

Alluring? Certainly. Sincere? Ah, therein lies the real question.

Just who posted this sign, and how polite and free of judgment were their intentions?

A seemingly simple, straightforward statement. But Help Yourself can mean many things.

1) You work hard and your efforts are integral to our success. We want to show our appreciation, so Help Yourself to these delectable desserts. 2) We couldn’t finish these, so Help Yourself, you tubby, free-loading loser.

Help Yourself was the call of the sign sitting in front of the plate of brownies left in the break room in February. A genuine directive, depending on who was reading.

“Oh, I didn’t know you moved to accounting,” came Ted’s smug remark.

“Huh?” was the mumble through a mouthful of delicious fudgy walnut.

“Those were for the accounting department.”

The sign discriminated. The sign did me in.

And yet, it wasn’t the sign at all. The sign had no feelings, no agenda. The sign didn’t write itself. The sign was only a means to draw unsuspecting readers into Ted’s trap.

It was Ted with an agenda. Ted with a misleading courtesy. Ted… with a lie.

Now before me sits a half-full container of cupcakes, lightly sprinkled and not overly frosted. Topped, in fact, by what appears to be the perfect amount of frosting. Enough to give each cake a sweet, sugary zest, but not so much to pain the teeth and stomp on the taste buds.

Help Yourself

The writing doesn’t look familiar. Care free and kind. Written in pink by someone who certainly wanted the office to partake in the joy he or she experienced just moments earlier.

Not written by Ted, in his cold, black, hard-edged, chicken scratches.

But who?

Someone else from accounting?

Maybe someone in Marketing.

A kind soul from H.R.? They always have food.

And who would be watching? Who would be peering around their doors and into the hall, hoping to spot the first to be lured in by such a tantalizing tray?

Maybe they all would.

Most certainly they all would.

Perhaps none would make a comment as disdainful as Ted’s, but comment they would. If not to me, then to each other.

“Look. Look who’s taking advantage of the free food,” they’d say. “Oh, of course. Mike’s always on the lookout for cupcakes,” they’d say. “I hear his wife cheats on him,” they’d all laugh together.

“Screw you and your stupid cupcakes,” I tell myself as I turn towards my desk.

But something grabs hold. No turn is made. Not yet. I stare directly at the goodies. Straight down, too frightened to see who may be watching.

Come on, no one’s watching. No one cares. Just take one, damnit. You’ve stood here for so long, it will look weirder if you don’t take one.

Reaching… reaching… now grab! Pivot! Pink-frosted mini cake firmly in hand.

Racing down the hall, disapproving stares pierce my back; their judgments tug my limbs.

“Probably been waiting all day, hoping someone would put out snacks. Haven’t missed a free meal yet, huh buddy? Friday we’re having doughnuts! Bwah ha ha ha ha!”

Faster! Walk faster!! Oh, here comes Betty. Shove it in your pocket!

Wait. She turned into Carl’s office! Pull it back out.

Close the door. Turn off the lights. They won’t come in if I play back the recording of an old webinar on speaker, too afraid to interrupt a call. Eat under the desk. Stuff it down without chewing. Hurry up!

Uhhhh, ip’s suhhh guhhhhd!!!

(Knock, knock) “You dropped some papers out here,” says a familiar voice.

Fuck you, Ted. Fuck you.

Lessons in Masochism

Last weekend I thought I had a brilliant idea. I had the kids by myself and we needed a week’s worth of groceries. After they both spent Saturday playing in a basketball game, going to a party, watching cartoons and playing video games at their friends’ houses, I decided Sunday morning that the fun was over. I had access to free babysitting (their grandparents) while I did the shopping, but I chose to have the kids come with me to the store instead.

I wasn’t trying to punish them for anything, but apparently I was trying to punish myself. I told myself before we left that it was necessary for my children to learn that life isn’t all about having fun. That the food they enjoy every other day doesn’t just magically appear in the refrigerator. As their parents, my wife and I make sacrifices so they can eat when we tell them they can.

And that’s true. It’s better to learn young that life is full of responsibilities. This strategy of teaching your kids what it takes to run the household is a classic parenting technique. I certainly don’t suspect that all parents do this, but I also know it isn’t a practice specific to me. So I felt vindicated in my decision.

I also soon felt very stupid.

Because instead what happened was the kids enjoyed themselves at the grocery store and I spent most of the time telling them to “put that back,” “stop jumping on the cart,” and “when no one’s looking, spit the milk back in the carton!”

Why do we do this? I think it’s so we can convince ourselves we’re teaching a valuable life lesson, which in turn generates a positive feeling of our parenting skills. The only problem is, this rosy feeling towards the enriching lesson we’ve imparted is wildly disproportionate to the actual impact it makes on our kids.

The reality is, there are plenty of opportunities to teach the importance of responsibility. It’s kind of ridiculous to convince yourself that this one moment will be the one that drives home the point, especially when it’s to your own detriment. I sacrificed much more of my own happiness in order to keep my kids from extending theirs.

And I knew by doing this that I was in for a rough trip to the store; that by the car ride home, I would be beaten down and my kids would be singing the theme song to Sophia the First. I didn’t care. It was necessary, I told myself.

How masochistic is that? It’s perversely masochistic, I tell you. Way more perverse than anything you might request in the bedroom.

My kids could have spent a pleasant morning with their grandparents, with a lifetime ahead of them to learn about responsibility (not to mention the numerous times we had already taught them about responsibility), and I could have enjoyed a quiet trip to the store without people looking at me as if I was the one who put splotches of chocolate sauce all over an open pack of toilet paper.

Hey Winter - Go F*#k Yourself

12/25/14 – Had a white Christmas for the first time in 10 years today. And not just a dusting – four inches. We were all pretty excited, but it will definitely wreak havoc for those traveling over the next couple of days. Glad we didn’t go anywhere this year. Spent the day opening presents and sledding in the backyard.

1/5/15 – Well, today was supposed to be the first day back at school after Winter Break, but we got another round of snow and ice over the weekend, so the roads were too dangerous for the buses. I don’t expect school to be open tomorrow or Wednesday either, given the temperatures aren’t going to even hit 20. The ice on the road will be around for a while. The snow was nice over Christmas, but I think everybody’s ready for things to get back to normal. J

1/8/15 – Talked to my sister today. She’s jealous of all the snow we’ve had. Says she “misses the seasons” being in Florida. I told her I haven’t been outside in three days due to the cold, and that my lips are split so bad they bleed whenever I open my mouth wide enough to yawn. She asked me to put some snow in the freezer so she could throw a snowball when she comes up to visit. It’s not a bad idea, but I think I’m going to drop it down her back while she sleeps.

1/11/15 – Wow, this just will not end. The kids have been out of school for three weeks and they are about to go on four, thanks to another blast of winter weather we’re supposed to get in the middle of the night. The weatherman said this latest storm is coming down from Canada and it’s known as a White Cap Nor’easter. Sounds bad, although I’m not sure how much worse it can get.

1/23/15 – I have shoveled snow four hours a day for 18 consecutive days. My skin is so dry and itchy, I’ve been sharpening the kitchen knives on my thighs. Going back to Christmas break, school has been closed for more than a month, but with the sun coming out and the temperatures hitting the 40s the next two days, it looks like it will finally be open again on Monday. Thank God!

1/26/15 – Son of a bitch! So this morning we got hit with what the weatherman called, I shit you not, a ‘Minnesota Ball Buster.’ I swear he made that up, but I don’t think his bosses care anymore. This sucks. I really thought we were out of the woods with the nice weekend we had.

1/31/15 – My sister sent me a text asking for a picture of the kids in their snow gear because apparently that’s “so adorable.” Instead I sent her a picture of our latest heating bill, which is $150 higher than what it usually averages this time of year. She texted back a crooked smiley-faced emoticon. As if that somehow represented my initial reaction upon seeing that my heating bill is $150 more than usual. I hope Florida gets hit with a lot more hurricanes than normal this year, like 30 or 40.

2/2/15 – Punxsutawney Phil came out of his hole this morning and saw his shadow, but before he could run back in, he was blown to pieces with a 12-gauge shotgun. The man dropped the weapon and immediately surrendered to police. The local Punxsutawney newscast said it was only the 5^th most gruesome Groundhog’s Day celebration in the town’s history. Huh.

2/6/15 – The roads are so treacherous that a plow skidded off the road and overturned in our neighborhood yesterday. No one from the plow company would come pick up the driver and no tow companies would risk getting out in the conditions to pull the truck upright. So I offered to let the driver stay with us, since we certainly can’t drive him anywhere. He slept on the couch, which was fine, I guess. Today was a different story, though. He only has one good eye, which he’s been using to ogle my wife. Pretty sure he’d ogle her with the other eye too, if he still had it. He says he lost it in a wolverine fight. I don’t know what that means. My son thinks that Wolverine, the super hero from the X-Men, clawed it out of his head, which makes the plow driver a “bad guy.” That being the case, my son is now scared to death of him. I would try to reassure him, but I think it’s unwise not to be afraid of him.

2/10/15 – Despite the overturned plow that still lies in the ditch across the street and the fact that no other plow has attempted to come through my neighborhood, my boss called today and said if I don’t come in to work, I’m fired. Luckily my wife’s company is more lenient because our daycare option is the elementary school’s after-school program, which, like school itself, has remained closed. I’m pretty sure the county has given up on the rest of the school year and will just start the fall session in mid-May.

If I have to go in, I’m at least going to use this opportunity to get the plow driver out of my house. I’m going to drop him at his place of employment, or with someone he knows, or the freakin’ bus station, if I have to. He’s eaten everything in the house and my wife is missing three pairs of underwear.

2/11/15 – According to our neighbor, the grocery store’s food trucks are delayed and there’s nothing left on the shelves except packets of yogurt that you squeeze out of a tube. That’s absolutely perfect since we’re now out of food thanks to the ex-con state employee who stayed with us for four days. I don’t know whether to believe him or not. If there was a limited amount of food left at the store and no estimated date for when the delivery trucks would bring more, I would totally tell people the only food items left are squeezable tubes of yogurt. Whether it’s true or not, I’ll have to find some food on my way home from work tomorrow.

On a side note, my hands are so dry and cracked they look like E.T. down by the creek. That reminds me, I forgot to turn on every faucet in the house again before getting into bed. Not sure how I forgot. I’ve been turning them on every night for six weeks in an effort to keep our pipes from freezing. Looking forward to that next bill too. At least things at the house aren’t as bad as they are at the office. Some of my co-workers have been sleeping there because their pipes are frozen, or they don’t have heat, or both. Yikes.

2/12/15 – Stopped into the store on my way home from work and, sure enough, saw a man running to the register with the last tube of squeezable yogurt in hand. He was naked from the waist down and urinating while running through the aisles, presumably so no one would try to take the tube of yogurt from him. Nevertheless, three people tried to do just that. I say that if a man wants a tube of yogurt bad enough that he’s willing to run naked through the store, urinating on himself and everything in front of him, then just let him have it. At least, that’s what I told myself after leaving the store. I wish I had told myself that before I joined the other two people in trying to extract the yogurt from the peeing man’s hands. Sure, I would have left the store empty handed, but I left empty handed anyway and am now covered in piss. Hindsight’s 20/20, I guess.

2/15/15 – Valentine’s Day came and went. We had nothing at home to eat, so the whole family went out to dinner. We also saw it as potentially the last chance we would ever leave the house since tonight we’re getting hit by a new snow storm that our local weatherman is calling the ‘Saskatchewan Ass Chapper.’ Under normal circumstances, I’m pretty confident he would get fired for his on-air behavior, but all the other meteorologists in town have been committed to the insane asylum. At any rate, few people are venturing out onto the roads, so we actually got a table at the first place we stopped at – Olive Garden. We brought garbage bags with us and shoveled salad and breadsticks in them every time the waiter left our table. I’m pretty sure he figured out what was going on fairly early, and at that point I’m also pretty sure he replenished them with salad and breadsticks from the dumpster. Whatever. Dumpster breadsticks from Olive Garden taste surprisingly like fresh breadsticks from Olive Garden.

2/28/15 – My sister called to check on us today. She couldn’t believe the news reports that schools in our area have been closed for more than two months, but she still managed to put a happy twist on it. “The kids must be having so much fun staying home from school,” she said. I almost hated to tell her they woke up this morning, saw there was still snow on the ground and immediately started stabbing each other with broken pencils. Turns out that’s about all broken pencils are good for. The erasers proved ineffective in making the blood on the carpet disappear.

She listened to me whine about the particularly long winter we’ve had for another five minutes and then broke in to remind me we still have running water, we still have electricity, that my wife and I both have our jobs and our whole family has its health. “Things could be worse,” she said. And she’s right. I felt kind of silly for going on about the snow. Bad weather is hardly the worst thing that could happen. I really shouldn’t complain so much.

3/1/15 – Good news, the kids took to sleeping in the tent with their sleeping bags better than I thought! They actually thought it was fun. I was nervous they’d be a little freaked out by the janitorial crew emptying the trash cans in the middle of the night, but they didn’t seem to notice. My wife and I could use a hot shower, but the sinks in the men’s and women’s bathrooms will have to do for now. And Bob in accounting says holding your suits under the hand dryers is just as good as taking them to the dry cleaners. Cheaper too.

They’re telling us our electricity should be restored by the end of the week, and the temperatures are rising, so our pipes should unfreeze any day now. After all, it’s March. Spring is just around the corner.

Valentine’s Day – Get the Lead Out

Kids today have it better than ever before, right? Hang around folks who are older than you, and that mantra will get repeated as if there’s no room for debate on the matter. Without fail, past generations always had it rougher as kids – they had to walk uphill in the snow to school every day, they never got anything good for Christmas, and they had to get proctology exams with nothing more than a flashlight and a stick. Oh, and back then kids got proctology exams.

And yet generation after generation simultaneously thinks every facet of life was better when they were young. Music was better, movies were better, schools were run more efficiently, elected officials were more competent, sports were played more purely, discipline was delivered more effectively, and nobody had any allergies or ever got hurt.

Whatever the reality, for kids, one thing was indisputably better a generation ago – Valentine’s Day. It has always sucked for men and single people, but it used to be cool if you were a kid. It was like Halloween without the hassle of walking the whole neighborhood. Kids went to school, exchanged valentines with everyone in class, then came home with a bag full of inscripted candy hearts that they would use to interpret their future relationship status with the giver of each valentine.

“Ooh, this one says ‘U R Cute.’ And it’s from a girl! Maybe one day we’ll be married!”

Now the candy heart industry is quickly becoming the next iteration of Blockbuster Video – a once thriving, multi-million dollar venture that five years from now will cease to exist.

Why? Because today kids go to school on Valentine’s Day and bring home bags full of unsharpened pencils. Pencils! Just what every child loves. School-aged kids spend their days surrounded by pencils. Do you think doctors ever ask for rubber gloves for their birthday?

And what the fuck are kids supposed to do with unsharpened pencils, of all things? Take them home where the walls of their bedroom are lined with one pencil sharpener after another? My kids look more forward to Groundhog’s Day.

On top of that, pencils aren’t valued anywhere outside of elementary school. They can’t use them for any kind of currency or bargaining. They can’t hold onto them in the hope that they’ll be worth something someday. No one else uses pencils. Hell, we rarely use pens anymore. Even after getting forest-fulls of pencils on this once-great holiday, the kids go right back to working on their school-issued iPads. So they’re not even valued inside elementary schools!

But that’s the reality. Bringing candy to school is out. It’s just not allowed anymore. Too bad, too. For all the things kids enjoy (not getting chicken pox, for instance) that we didn’t get to, they definitely get the short end of the stick on Valentine’s Day. The short end of a lead-filled, eraser-capped stick.

This Just In... Living Can Kill You

Have you heard the latest thing that’s bad for you? You probably have, but maybe you’re unsure if it’s the latest latest thing or just the “latest” thing since we’re told roughly eight new things a day that we should avoid.

Smoking is bad for you, sure. Drinking is bad for you, I guess. It can be. Except for those times when it’s good for you. Eating too much is terrible for you, but not eating enough is just as bad, if not worse. And the food itself is laced with enough fat, transfat, cholesterol, corn syrup and chemicals that it’s killing us whether we eat it or just occupy the same room it’s in. Everything we own is killing us – our cell phones, our microwaves, our cleaning supplies and our asbestos.

Know those things doctors use to see if we’re dying inside? Yeah, X-rays. Those kill us. And you know that thing doctors do to actually go inside of us to stop us from dying? Surgery? That can kill us too.

Spending too much time in the sun can kill you, but so can spending too much time in the lightning.

Sex is actually good for you, unless you do it too vigorously, in which case it can give you a heart attack, sexually transmitted diseases or an alien baby that will spring forth from your chest without the proper vaccine.

But you knew all this already. So what the hell is killing us now, you ask? The very thing you’re doing now, as a matter of fact. No, not reading, although I can’t see how that’s possibly good for you either. I mean the other thing – sitting.

Now granted, just sitting all day, every day isn’t good for anyone. You’ll get fat and your arteries will clog and it’ll lead to the same thing vigorous sex leads to – chest-popping alien babies. We all need to exercise. But the headline of the article, in case you are one of these pathological sitters who is so lazy you can’t even click to it, clearly says “Sitting Will Kill You, Even If You Exercise.”

Well that is fucking fantastic.

Why don’t we all start stabbing ourselves near vital organs because what the hell else can we do? Combatting occasional sitting with exercise isn’t enough? Are we supposed to constantly exercise? Like, 16 hours a day, nonstop? We literally cannot stop running, skipping and jump-jacking everywhere we go?

How are we supposed to get to work? Should we all move to the city and walk? No more driving or taking the subway or even biking to the office, I guess. Nothing that involves a seat, right? And what do we do when we get there? We all supposed to become personal trainers, training each other every waking hour of the day? Even professional athletes should quit athleting because at some point they all sit on the bench, even if it’s just for a few minutes. No one will be watching the games anyway, given all the seatless arenas and plummeting couch sales.

And no more enjoying a meal, I guess. The good news is restaurants will be able to cram in a lot more people without all those pesky tables in the way.

No more traveling to far away lands to explore new and exciting cultures because we have to sit inside some kind of vessel in order to get there. OR, let’s get rid of seats on airplanes! The passengers can all get in a line and leap-frog each other for the entire duration of the flight!

Giving up sitting means giving up something else too. Something fairly necessary. Crucial, even. Think about it.

That’s right. No more sitting means no more shitting.

And while sitting might be hazardous to your health, I’m pretty sure NOT SHITTING will have its own ill effects. You gonna scratch bowel movements off your daily routine?

So let’s all agree to stop this. The fact is anything and everything can kill us. Living leads to dying. Granted, some enjoyable activities should be avoided for the sake of our health, and we can avoid them while still living satisfying lives, but does every God forsaken thing that brings us even a modicum of pleasure have to be abandoned so we might live a couple more agonizing, joyless, exhausting, pathetic years?

Unless it’s something  we’d all be happy to give up, like finding out its fatal to listen to jazz or to reference someone’s tweet during a newscast, can we stop with all the “studies” that find out things we already know and are designed simply to alarm the general public?

“Too much stress can kill you. Are you feeling stressed? Really? Well stop. Stop being stressed. Did you hear me? Stop it! You’re stressing out! STOP STRESSING OUT!”

Seriously, though. You know what’s good for stress? Cigarettes. Well, cigarettes and turning off all loud noises and other stimuli while taking deep breaths in a relaxed, seated position.

Damnit!

Motivation: It Only Costs an Arm and a Leg

This time of year, people are always searching for motivation to finally accomplish what they haven’t been able to during any of the decades prior. If you or someone you know is in need of some extra motivation, I recommend cutting off a limb. Two if you really want to achieve something.

Show me a person with three or fewer limbs, and I’ll show you someone who can drive better than you, dance better than you, swim farther, bowl more strikes and probably even beat you in a race. How do people without limbs get motivated to be more physically active than the rest of us? I don’t know, but they do.

How often have you seen a double amputee perform a remarkable athletic feat alongside numerous other amputees, all on a competitive stage, and then looked into the stands to see a two-armed fat guy knock his drink over while lowering a hotdog from his mouth? Maybe having both arms means always having one in the way.

Most of us who aren’t physically limited by anything other than our laziness are by and large crippled by that very thing. If we only use our brains to 10% of their capacity, how far are we from getting our bodies to perform at their maximum potential? My guess is: far.

Other things that people with fewer than all their bones can do better than you include:

• Play the piano
  
• Knit
• Ski
• Box
• Wrestle
• Jump rope
  
• Climb mountains
  
• Pull ups
  
• Push ups
  
• Sit ups
  
• Get erections (none of the dudes needing wiener pills are missing arms or legs in those commercials)

Sometimes climbing up a mountain and skiing back down it aren’t enough, though. After losing limbs in military combat, instead of retiring to a peaceful existence of reading US Weekly and watching The Housewives of Miami, things they have more than earned the right to do, some brave men and women ask to be REDEPLOYED. Quite a few, actually. Have you and your four perfectly good limbs even ENLISTED? Hell no! You’re using one hand to scroll down the page and the other to shovel gluten-covered trans fat down your gullet.

Don’t get me wrong, I applaud you for it. But clearly you need some motivation. Hopefully seeing these folks in action is inspiring enough, but if not – you can always borrow a table saw.