Quitting

So I was all ready to crank out this post on Republicans who quit, since Tom "The Hammer (meaning the indicted former House Majority Leader, not the Adam Carolla movie of the same name)" DeLay quit a TV show I've never once watched the other day. Apparently, he had some sort of stress fracture in his foot, which would seem to not be the kind of thing you want to have when you're trying to dance for several hours a day.

I once danced (excuse me, I need to get the air quotes from the back porch) "danced" for 30 straight hours once, and that pretty much sucked all the way around except for the part where we raised a couple thousand dollars for a charity and I got to see Alan Thicke get all sleazy and give a 19 year old his hotel room key.

Quick side note: I have twice in my life been in the same room as Mr. Alan Thicke, comedian (wait, "comedian") star of "Growing Pains" "Thicke of the Night" (on which I, for one, thought he was surprisingly tolerable) and "Pictionary: the Game Show, not at all a rip off of Win, Lose or Draw which was a rip-off of Pictionary to start with" (title approximate). Once was during aforementioned charity dancing event, for which he was the celebrity (just consider them assumed) host, and once when he wrote a book for the company I worked for. The book, which is still in print with another publisher, is called "How Men Have Babies: The Pregnant Father's Survival Guide," which I can sum up thusly: Wow, the boobs get big! But don't touch 'em, they might explode! Because the hormones, I tells ya...anyway, you get the point. It was incredibly unfunny and stereotypical and sad, considering he claimed to be motivated to write it thanks to witnessing the miracle of pregnancy and childbirth and enjoying so much the experience of becoming a father a few years back (this was in 1998 or so)...no doubt much to the confusion, chagrin and rejection of his adult children from his first marriage, who only inspired him to leave their mother for a 26 year old Miss World contestant. So yeah, he wrote this totally hypocritical and shallow book that privately we called "Bill Cosby's 'Fatherhood' for sleazy middle-aged Canadians." Or maybe that was the jacket blurb, not sure. So, as is occasionally the custom in these situations, we flew him in to chat up the sales force and have dinner. He spent the entire night badmouthing the food (it was a made-to-order stir fry type thing, which he called "pork and peanut butter"...they must not get much Thai food in your part of Canada, eh Alan?) and slobbering over my friend (name redacted), who did everything but shove her new engagement ring up his nostril trying to get the creepy old guy away from her. I guess the moral of the story, if there is one, is that Alan Thicke is creepy and horny. By the way, the 19 year old immediately started passing around the hotel key, trying to get someone else to use it, but no dice. It now occurs to me that the key was for a room in the same hotel where the meet-and-greet dinner occurred 6 years later. I feared for my job at the time, so I did not have the guts to ask him if he remembered the last time he was at that hotel.

Hmm, that really didn't pan out as a "quick" side note, now, did it? Well, that's how these things go, I guess.

Anyway, where was I? Right, Tom DeLay. Quitting. This, on the heels (relatively speaking, at least), of Sarah Palin quitting as governor of Alaska. It made me wonder if maybe this were some sort of trial balloon by the GOP, as in "let's see how far we can get by quitting" or maybe the reality show bit was just a short term test of whether they could raise someone's prospects by appearing on a show like that (much like Bill Clinton did by appearing on Arsen...hee, I can't even say it with a straight face...Arsenio Hall's wildly successful late night talk show...woof) and maybe after a couple weeks they had all the data they needed. We'll know if that was the case if we see Newt Gingrich on "The Bachelorette".

That made me think about quitting in general, and how we're so conditioned to see it as a bad thing. And it's not necessarily. There's no shame in quitting when there are better options, or even when doing nothing is a better option than doing what you're doing. I've often said that the best move I ever made in school was quitting the 8th grade football team. I sucked at it, and I hated it (those who know my love of the game now will be shocked at this, but the coach was a tyrant, I was out of shape and had very little interest in puking my guts out every day for 6 weeks so I could be a 3rd string offensive lineman, even though I was clearly a fullback or tight end). I'm not sure why I decided to quit, I just remember sitting in the bathtub after practice one night, wondering if I could risk bringing my homework into the tub with me so I could soak for another hour and...oh yeah, that's why. It was a rough time at home. My dad had recently come off a two year long layoff and was working either 2nd or 3rd shift, meaning I only saw him on Sundays, really, and he was pretty well wrecked then from the weird schedule. I didn't want to disappoint him by quitting, because I knew all of his stories from playing football at my high school (my favorite being the time he got knocked unconscious and they had to hold up the game...mainly because they couldn't get him off the field, but also because our team only had 11 players so they had to wait for him). Not having the relevant source of advice available was a problem, so I left him a note. In retrospect, I could have stayed up until he got home from work, but I seem to recall that being a) a waste of time, since it was the middle of the freaking night and he was tired, adn b) to be used only in a genuine, something's-on-fire emergency. Essentially, I asked him if he would be upset or disappointed if I didn't play football anymore. Maybe I wrote two lines. What I got back, without getting too corny, was pretty much the template for the parent I've always tried to be. It was definitive and supportive and genuine, and I don't remember exactly what it said, but I do remember the words "ABSOLUTELY NOT" in all caps (in reference to the "will you be mad at me?" question, not the question of whether I was allowed to quit). He knew that I was miserable, and was able to put aside his own biases and ideas and see things from my point of view, which is a pretty remarkable thing for a guy trying to support a family by busting his hump at a terrible job in a stupid factory for 10 hours a day. And, though no mention was directly made of the incident, shortly thereafter a job miraculously opened up on the first shift again. I'd have hated to be my dad's boss the day after he got my note, and now where the hell did my snarky little post about republicans and Alan Thicke go, and why did it suddenly get dusty in here? Damn you, allergies.

So, to regroup and recap...quitting, not all that bad of a thing. And maybe it's a trap, softening the ground for another 2012 hopeful to get massive free exposure. I'd watch next season's lineups on the reality shows if I were you, which certainly beats the hell out of watching the shows themselves.