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What's In a Name?

Okay, so what is this name thing all about?  Fallibility: Personified what does that even mean?

Actually, it is based on something that my Dad said to me as a kid.  See my Dad and I were not really close.  It is possible that when I was really young, we were tight, but as I aged the gap just continued to widen. 

It is a shame and quite honestly, I am mostly to blame.  I was an absolute shit as a kid.  

Shocker, huh!  

Now, many people may feel that I am still in that stage, but I am working my way out.  

I lied, cheated, stole.  Pretty much you name it and I did it.  There were drugs, nothing too hard, but plenty of it.  Drinking quite a bit and there was plenty of sex as well.  In fact, that was some of the most astonishing.  Having your dad walk in on you and your girl on top of the covers is quite an impactful event.  At the time I thought it was funny, that just shows you the depth of my ass-ness. 

Back to the name.  I was an ass, my pops and I were oil and water, but he gave me some amazing advice.

He said, and I am paraphrasing given the decades since the advice was received, “People are fallible, they make mistakes, are weak, and give in to temptation.  The key to avoiding trouble is to avoid the occasion to sin.  Don’t put yourself into a situation that will likely present a tempting situation and you will likely not get into trouble.”  

Boom.  So much wisdom in that.  Across the board too. 

Wanna lose weight, don’t hang out in bakeries.  Wanna avoid drinking, don’t hang out in bars.  Wanna start going to the gym, don’t stay out late.

But for me it was sticky.  Of all the things that my Dad tried to teach me, this was the thing that I retained.  I also combined it with a super power I had.  

My super power was a sixth sense that would perk up when it was time to leave.  Maybe it was a fight about to break out, some sort of drama, or more often the cops would show up.  Now it wasn’t 100% but given the amount of time I spent with questionable items in my possession it was very reliable.  Reliable enough that if I said I think we need to leave, me and my friends would head straight out.   

Even given my radar for trouble, I knew that some situations were bad… and some situations were fun.  There were enough of the fun times sans radar pings that I had, and succumb to, more than my fair share of temptations.  I was like the character in Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail who wanted to be left in the convent.  I ran to occasions to sin like a fat kid to ice cream truck and I relished in it.  In fact, the “badness” is what made it so good.  But that was then and looking back I just shake my head at the stupidity.  The waste.  So many opportunities thrown away to drink or party or chase girls.  

Now as an older and somewhat wiser adult, I have improved my ability to resist temptation.  Maybe that was the purpose of the prior poor behavior.  It acted as a training macrocycle to develop a tolerance to temptation.  Now this is in no way to say that I am Teflon.  There have been, and likely will be, plenty of hangovers to prove my amateur status. Ultimately, I still like to have fun, but fun has a bit of a different definition.  

I still follow my Dad’s advice and I hope it will be just as sticky for my kids.  

So that’s it.  That is the source of the name.  I am fallible as a person, just as all other people are.  Sometimes I need to remember that.     

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