There is a cartoon that my boys are watching lately called Phineas and Ferb. Now, I don’t know much about the show, but I happened to catch a part of one episode the other morning. There is a mad scientist kind of character who constantly battles with a platypus. (Sounds like engaging t.v. doesn’t it?) Anyway, the mad scientist has a high squeaky voice and was listening to tough guy tapes to try and change his image. During this process, he created an evil machine that would put helium into the air so that all other voices would be high, thereby making his voice lower by comparison.
It was a brilliant plan.
My oldest son, Jonah, just finished a three-day basketball camp where there was another kid who kept telling him that he was a bad player. This other kid wasn’t very good, but just knew that telling my son that he was bad would in turn make him a better player by comparison.
It was a brilliant plan.
The problem is that neither of these plans worked. The platypus destroyed the evil invention. The other kid was still bad and my son didn’t care how much smack the other one talked. ( On a side note: the other kid is probably lucky that he didn’t push Jonah too much because my boy is SOLID. )
How many times do we attempt to make our light shine brighter by blowing out another person’s candles?
It’s a brilliant plan.
It just doesn’t work.
