Obviously, part of my role as Assistant Principal is dealing with student issues.  What follows are lines I hear from students and parents, followed by a few lessons I learned from my father that I wish were passed along to kids today.

“It isn’t fair.”  Fair describes either the weather or a place where you judge pigs.  Nothing else.  Once I learned that life would never be fair, it became much simpler.

“I wasn’t the only one doing it.”  Only means that others made the same poor choice, and in no way rationalized or justified the choice I made.  While it is true that you stand out less in a crowd, it’s still a poor choice and expect to either endure or enjoy the consequences.  And Dad never cared what consequences were given to the other kids, it really didn’t matter.

“I didn’t do it.”  That’s ok, it just makes up for one of the times you didn’t get caught doing it.  Life is the great equalizer.

“My child didn’t do/say those things.  I didn’t teach them to do that.”  Your parents didn’t teach you to do/say them either, but you did them when you were this age.  Once again, life is the great equalizer.

And so it goes…