Now Yer Messin With A …

Amazing how music finds memories in the very back recesses of your brain.

It happened to me just today.

I left the office today and marched across the parking lot to my little Sebring. It was a beautiful afternoon of full sun, so I rolled down all the windows and opened the moon roof all the way for that convertible effect.

Detroit has a great radio station, 94.7 that plays classic rock just like the play list that my favorite station in Atlanta, 96 Rock, used to play when I was a teenager in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

It was one of the best things about moving to Windsor from London. A 94.7 made me feel like a kid back in Atlanta again. To me, it's a great radio station.

As I pulled on to the expressway, an old song came on that brought back memories like only music can do.

Even songs you don't like, but still remember, will bring back great memories.

This was an old song by a band called Nazareth. In all it's crudity. The song is called "Sum ub ah Bich" (or something that might sound like that anyway…).

So at the now graying age of forty six, I turned it up real loud, put on my sunglasses and reclined the seat of the car back a bit.

"Now yer messin' with a … son of a …"

And my mind went back to when my family first moved to Georgia in 1975.

At that time we were living in Apple Valley Minnesota. South of Saint Paul – Minneapolis – just outside another small town called Rosemount.

Minnesota was – at least to me as a boy of twelve or thirteen – a very sterile and clean environment. Everyplace was well groomed. Gardens and the greenest of grass. And the people in Minnesota were very … well .. I guess "proper" is the best term that comes to mind. Boring – but sterile and proper.

My Dad received notice in the summer of 1974 that he could choose the transfer of his choice to become a regional manager for 3M company's business products division. The choices were San Diego California, and Atlanta Georgia.

Dad chose Atlanta.

Mom and Dad took a trip together to go look for our new house. And they found one in a little town I have written here about before, Lawrenceville. It was a nice subdivision, with a community co-op style club around the corner called Plantation Swim and Racket Club – or PSRC for short.

When we arrived, the culture shock was immense.

We were Canadians living in the United States as green-card-carrying landed immigrants. And in Michigan, where we lived when I was a little boy in elementary school, and then Minnesota, where we lived when I was in middle school (grades seven and eight), we fit right in. Minnesotans could easily be confused for Canadians – at least I think so.

But Georgia – well that's a whole different bowl of peach cobbler. A completely new slice of pecan pie.

The food was different. The attitudes were different. The rules were a lot more relaxed. And well, the pattern of speech was different.

I remember sitting in my very first class in the eighth grade – a trailer – a busted down trailer – with graffiti on the desks and walls – dirty and smelly – waiting amongst this strange trailer full of southern kids – all talking like a completely different language. It was English – but damned if I knew what they were saying.

"That thar's the new kid, I dun wonder where he come from?" said a pretty little girl a couple of seats ahead of me.

"Don't know, but he's kind-a funny lookin."

I guess I was pretty funny looking to them. I had a short haircut my Mom would approve of, I was short, and pudgy. I was also very pale in comparison to southerners. I was just new from Minnesota – and Minnesota wasn't really a sun tanning paradise.

"Hey kid, where y'all from?"

"I'm sorry, what did you say?" I replied.

I thought I had landed in Mayberry. I thought "all these kids couldn't really talk this way, could they?"

In came the teacher. Mrs Blylock.

"Thank God", I thought. "She'll tell these kids to stop faking their Gomer Pyle accents."

"Mornin' y'all", said Mrs. Blylock. "How was y'alls summer?"

"Oh my God", I thought, "This is real. Holy cow these people really are serious".

Every single syllable word was spread out to become two or three syllables. The pitch of their voices went up and down in a sing song manner as they practically sang their words. I wish I could write music to express it to you more effectively.

But as time went on, I adapted.

I learned that y'all meant you. And all y'all meant everyone present. I learned that yonder meant someplace over there – or thar . And dun (done) didn't mean something you completed, but just simply added action to the sentence. You didn't just do something. You dun did it.

Then I was assimilated.

And that year of eighth grade at Lilburn Middle School went along quite nice. There were big kids in my class that I looked up to, like Kirk Ewing and Damon Huston. On our street it was Bill Huseby and Mike Lefevbre. The cool guys. The big guys. The guys who weren't scared to fight. Not bully's. They were all pretty damned good guys.

After eighth grade was over, and summer was kicking in, I started playing baseball in Lawrenceville's little league and swimming for the local club PSRC. I was pretty good at both. And I also hit a growth spurt. I grew somewhere between six inches and a foot in a single month.

And now I was as big as the guys I looked up to.

And I learned what confidence felt like.

But now to get back to the point about a song bringing back memories … It was the first day of high school at Berkmar High. Waiting for the bus with my now neighborhood buddies. And the bus pulled up to let us on.

As I got on the bus, an old dilapidated version of a bus with those big green seats with the springs shot out and rips bandaged up with silver duct tape, there was something weird. The driver was a hippy looking girl probably in her early twenties. And she had … an eight track tape player … in the bus? And it was playing Rock music. Pretty heavy music.

And as I sat down in my seat, the music blared …

"Now yer messin with a … son of a …."

"So this is high school.." I thought as I sat with my buddies. "This is pretty cool".

And when I got to school, my new found height, my athletic build, and the muscles in my arms – not to mention my deep tan, was noticed. The guys I used to look up to came up to me to say "hey" – southern for hi.

And I said "hey, how y'all doin?"

And I was converted.

And on the way home from school, the hippy chick bus driver was playing her eight track tape again. And I remember thinking to myself as I sat next to a pretty neighborhood girl …

"Now yer messin with a son of a …"

Absolutely Right

When I was a boy, growing up in the southeastern state of Georgia, my Dad would continually pound into the heads of my brother Paul and I the means to achieve a positive outlook on life, and demonstrate to us again and again the kind of doors such an outlook would open for us.

At that time we lived a suburban town of Atlanta called Lawrenceville. It was there that Paul and I grew into teenagers. It was there that we became athletes. Not only did we love sports, but we were very good.

Okay, I know, that sounds egotistical. And I apologize. But this is how we saw ourselves. This is how our Dad taught us to see ourselves. We believed wholly in our hearts that we were and therefore that is what we became.

It started with baseball. And baseball started before we moved to Georgia. As long as I can remember, anytime we came across a ball diamond, we pulled the family car over, got the equipment bag out of the trunk, and held infield, batting, and pitching practice.

We did this for fun. This was our family’s way of having fun together. I still remember slamming long drives and flies out to center and right fields and watching mom get on her horse to get under the ball to make the catches. She would throw the ball back into Paul who was on the mound pitching, and Dad catching behind the plate.

God those days were great.

Dad would pound balls at me at short stop – making me trust me myself that charging the hardest hid grounder was the best way to pick up the ball. Charging hard in, picking up the ball on the short hop, and wheel it to first.

We were both good, we made every all star team, and we knew that we always going to play well. That was what our Dad instilled in us. Confidence in the very skills he taught us.

When Paul started getting good at tennis, Dad used those same principles to instill into Paul that he was good and he could compete with anybody in the State. In the mid-seventies, Atlanta was quite a hotbed for junior tennis, and the competition was fierce. Paul moved his way up the state ladder to reach the top-five. He had the skills, he had confidence in those skills, and he used them to achieve the goals that he set.

Those same principles are still deeply instilled in both my brother and I today.

We both know that there is nothing to hard for us to learn and master. We both know that we can acquire any skill we need to meet any challenge we may face. And we both know that having mastered the skills, the confidence comes naturally.

"So what does this have to do with positive thinking?" You may ask. "Did you get off track again, Fred?"

No, confidence is the core foundation needed to acquire optimism. When you are confident in yourself, in your skills, then you can only be optimistic about the results. You simply know you will succeed.

You will succeed. There is no doubt.

Optimism is the ultimate positive state of thinking.

My Dad had a saying. “If you think you are right, then you are right. You are absolutely right, until you are proven wrong.”

"Huh? You lost me."

Well, let me break it down. If you think you are right about something, and you are a confident person, then you will commit yourself to the decision you believe is right. You will not approach that decision in a wishy-washy manner of “I think this might work”.

That confidence allows that commitment to that decision to be clear in your mind. That clear decision becomes your goal. And you have commitment to your goal. And once you set a goal, you must be absolutely committed. There is no room to waver or second-guess yourself. You are absolutely right, and you must proceed with that commitment to complete that goal.

The part about “until you’re proven wrong” simply means that should your decision be incorrect, meaning your committed to a false goal, you have to understand – identify that you are wrong, accept that you are wrong, and re-align your commitment to your new decision.

To follow this method of thinking will result in ever-deepening confidence in yourself. That ever-growing confidence will inspire greater optimism. That optimism will ultimately conclude in a very positive thinking, self-satisfied person.

The person you want to be.

For all the things that my brother Paul and I have to thank our Dad for, this lesson I believe is the greatest gift I have ever received. While it is difficult – if not impossible – to maintain this state of thinking all the time, it does become easier each time you slip from it to identify that slip, and correct your mental course.

And of this, I am right. I am absolutely right. Until I am proven wrong.