Ol' MJH was blessed growing up in Boone, Iowa in the 1960's to have had such wonderful teachers and coaches. I always figured they were so grounded and patriotic because they either served in or were alive during WWII. Teenagers became adults before it was expected but it was necessary.
One of my instructors was Laurence Paar. He taught 9th grade Western Civ and coached me as a 9th grader on the sophomore basketball team. In addition, he was my offensive line coach as a football player my junior year. To say he was 'old school' is putting it mildly. One day at football practice he was his usual taskmaster self. It was in August when the heat and humidity rivaled that of Hell. We practiced in what was called 'the weed patch'. It was loaded with cockle burrs and every other god forsaken plant He could devise. If you're not familiar with these pea sized pieces of plant they have burrs on them that hurt when they enter ones skin. Anyway, we players weren't living up to Mr. Paar's standards and he needed to exert his authority. All of a sudden he blurted out, "Get me some grass."
This meant we had to get on our all fours and crawl to a weedy area about sixty yards away and shove grass and cockle burrs into our mouths, crawl back to him and spit the crap out at his feet. It was humiliating but he was only exerting his authority and who doesn't like crawling through Hades and back, anyway? One of the guys had a mouthful of these burrs and they punctured his tongue. He complained about his reason for causing us all to have to go through our task saying his leg hurt. And then Coach said, "Hey, excuses only satisfy the ones who give them." If I heard him utter that phrase less than 100 times I'd have been shocked.
Excuses ARE for losers and Coach Paar was 100% correct. Just look at the guy in the Oval Office.
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