@ThelmaLou already said “You can’t care more than they do”. That’s my experience with teaching college students.
The things-on-the-car-roof applies to my daughter. When I tell my students that they should backup their data, including the phone, I tell them about the time my daughter put her phone on the roof of the car, took off her coat before getting in, and drove off, seeing the phone hit the road in the review mirror. She did that twice.
When you’re in fifth grade, and the cutest girl in the class invites you to go to her birthday party - a boy-girl party no less - make sure you remember to actually go to it. Oh! how my life may have changed…
If you have car trouble on the way to work, and stop at the dealership to drop off the car and pick up a loaner, and you will be backing up your car prior to parking it, do not take your laptop bag out of the car and put it on the ground behind it.
Corollary: Do not try to claim a warranty repair on a “defective laptop screen” if the defect is in the shape of tire tread marks.
Ouch! My stepson did this with a guitar, i.e., set it on the ground behind the car, forgot it was there, and proceeded to back over it. Crunch
New rule: don’t set anything on the ground where your car wheels might encounter it, whether the car is moving forward or backward.
I have another rule for myself: I never set my glasses on any surface where I or anyone else might sit or stand. So I never set my glasses, even for a second, on the seat of a chair, sofa, bed, kitchen stool, etc., or on the floor.
Learned this in college one day when a friend and I were sitting on the grass, and I got up to show her a dance step from a Fred Astaire movie, stepped on, and broke my glasses.
Similar - don’t lean your skis or snowboard on the side of your car - the slightest movement will send them to the ground scraping the paint all the way down. I suppose that goes for anything: Save time and aggravation and just put them/it on the ground to start with.
At work only send emails that you don’t mind havuing forwarded on to others.
Most people are so insecure about themselves they really aren’t paying attention to the stupid things you do (or think you do). This includes the more popular people - they’re just better at hiding it.
Cliques exist whether you’re in elementary, middle, high school, college or beyond. Work cliques, parenting cliques, you name it - you’re always gonna find a group that’ll exclude you (usually not intentionally). Don’t take it personally, just be prepared for it.
Just the other day I stopped someone from backing over their own stuff up at the gas station. There was a young couple in the car, he put air in the tires while she rummaged through the trunk pulling out some bags and boxes, obviously looking for something. The guy got done and helped her throw almost all the stuff back in the trunk. They hopped in the car, I could see they started it up and I shouted “Hey, hey, hey!” and got their attention. Then with pointing and yelling got them to understand there was one more bag under the back bumper of the car.
Another Life Lesson, this one not from me, but learned by a friend:
If you have an expensive new car that you carefully put in the garage every night, and you have heavy gardening implements hanging on the garage wall, make sure that they’re hanging really securely.
Don’t do anything your older brother tells you to do. But do go ahead and tell your younger brother to do the same thing. If it ends badly you can blame it on the older brother.
And, if you buy something you don’t plan to use for a while, write down where you put it. You might have a perfectly good reason at the time why you put it there but some months down the line you aren’t going to remember it.
My wife learned this one: When mixing up your neti pot/sinus rinse solution, NEVER forget to add the salt/bicarb combo. She rushed through her routine rather distractedly one time, omitting those key ingredients and gave her rinse solution reservoir a big squeeze, and the scream she let out when her nasopharynx was filled with distilled water unbuffered had me running to her from the far side of the house, sure she’d just been horribly injured.
Probably the worst mistake I ever made in my life:
Be a young college student walking back down from an all day hike up and down a very tall mountain while on break. A pickup truck with six or eight really hot, probably college girls passes by and stops and ask if I want to ride with them. Wanting to show them that I am a real man, I tell them, “That’s OK, I can walk the rest of the way.”
As a corollary, limit the places you put important stuff. My car keys can only be in one of three places, for example. My hearing aid is either in my ear or in one of two containers. My wallet is always in one of two places.
Yes to this. My car keys are always in my left front pocket of my jeans. Hearing aids are in ear or in a container in my right front pocket. Keys for truck (that I don’t drive that often) are always in a dish on the hutch. If My sunglasses are not on my head, they are always in a bowl on my hutch. And that’s where my check book lives too. I don’t lose anything this way.
