Instructing Children in the Martial Arts – Part V

An instructor/friend used to hold annual summer camps at a major national park. All of his camps were heavily attended by his students, who looked forward all year to the events. Buses were hired to transport everyone several hundred miles to the park, and not just young students, but entire families as well. At the park, everyone lived in a large block of the park’s permanent tents, which my friend had arranged months in advance. He spent the entire preceding year planning the calendar for each camp, making sure each day’s events would be both fun and educational. It was a great venue and he did a great job.

One night (as best as I remember the details), a teenage girl bragged to a friend that she had just had sex with a man at the camp. Word reached the girl’s mother and the girl was questioned. She affirmed the incident and identified the man as the young husband of one of the camp’s assistant instructors and father of one of the campers.

The police were called. The man was arrested, tried, and convicted. He spent time in prison and lost his family and his job. In the process, he also, unfortunately, put an end to the camps.

I mention this because it is a possibility we all need to take into consideration when planning our events. I always try to implement a comprehensive system of chaperones to make sure young students, and especially teenagers, can never be alone with those of the opposite gender.

There was an unusual wrinkle to this incident. The man claimed the girl had “come on” to him. When he ignored her advances, she reportedly told him that if he didn’t have sex with her, she would tell people that he had and get him into trouble. So, according to him, he relented. The girl never denied his claim (to my knowledge), nor did it matter legally. The police medically verified the act had taken place between an adult and an underage girl and he was imprisoned.

Those of us who knew the girl suspected that she was capable of doing what he claimed. This was certainly no excuse for what he did. That was clearly defenseless. Plus most of us would have handled such a threat in the exact opposite manner. We would have immediately reported her to her mother and those in charge. So, in my estimation, he was either lying or stupid.

But in this age of an over-emphasis on sex at younger and younger ages, it is yet another of the many things instructors need to be on guard against – both from the standpoint of themselves and from that of those who attend their events or teach for them.

Thank you for reading. I’ll soon be adding another couple of posts on this and related subjects before moving on to more positive matters.

Instructing Children in the Martial Arts – Part IV

“As teachers we have a sacred oath to our students (and their families). They view us as teachers, mentors and protectors.” – Hanshi Cezar Borkowski

A few years ago, a major British actress (forget which one) appeared on one of our late-night TV talk shows – Jay Leno, I think. They talked at one point about her children. The host asked if they were going to attend school in Los Angeles or London. She quickly said they would be educated in the UK. The host asked “Don’t you like American children?” Her reply was “There are no children in America, only little adults.”

The emphasis on sex within our society is pervasive. It’s in our ads. It’s in our music. It’s in our movies and on TV. It permeates our entire society. So it’s no wonder kids today are far more sex-oriented (by light years) than in my day.

All this means instructors need to be even more careful today.

Comedian Richard Pryor once talked about the challenge he found in being around his teenage daughter’s underage girlfriends, especially on those nights when they had sleep-overs. Some, according to him, were sexually very forward. He said “These girls were in my house and they were beautiful and had the bodies of women in these skimpy, little nighties and I thanked God they still had those little girl voices. When they’d say ‘How are you tonight, Mr. Pryor?’ it would always clear my head.”

Martial arts instructors can be faced with the same challenge. When we couple our sexually permissive society with the fact that we are often viewed by our students as wise, flawless, and powerful men and women, we have the potential for a perfect and very destructive storm. Some can find the qualities they see in us as being very attractive. I’ve also seen competition develop within a dojo to see who could be the one to capture the instructor’s heart, and in some cases parts further south. When those who offer themselves, or go after, an instructor are underage, a major, life-ruining situation can easily develop if the instructor isn’t strong enough to keep things in a proper student-instructor relationship.

I’ve always viewed my students as my children. (Of course, I’m old enough now that all of them could be my children – or my grandchildren or great grandchildren.) So it hasn’t been a challenge for me. But I am aware of many who did find it a challenge. And I know of none who succumbed to such thoughts and it ended well for anyone.

I’ll cut this off for now. But I’ll have a bit more to say about it in my next post. Thanks again for your continued support.

Instructing Children in the Martial Arts - Part III

A 7 or 8-year-old girl in one of my outside classes at an upper to upper middle class school kept hugging one of the little boys, making it impossible for him to practice for that day’s test. So I finally made her leave him alone.

As he ran through his kata, she began talking loudly with another little girl. She told her she wanted to marry the boy. Then, she said something that shocked me - “I want to have sex with him.” The little boy overheard her and asked, “Do you even know what that means?” I couldn’t hear her reply so I don’t know how she answered.

As soon as class was over, I reported the incident to a school official. They said a counselor would speak with her about it, which was my primary goal. But I also reported it to protect myself and my program at the school. If one of those involved, or someone who had overheard the exchange, later discussed it with their parents or other teachers, they might wonder what was going on in karate, where kids were talking about sex. Stories can also change as they get passed from person to person, or repeated by those who couldn’t quite make out what was actually said and filled in the blanks.

I consider it a good practice to always err on the side of being overly cautious. Always report anything sexual in nature, or that could be construed as sexual, to other trusted adults as soon as possible. If anything later comes of it, there will be others to nip it in the bud. And the sooner these types of things can be nipped, the better.

When I posted the subject of this blog series on my Facebook page (Mather Karateka), it elicited many responses, including several from senior instructors around the world. These men and women have lifetimes of experience teaching adults and children. Here are just a couple of their comments and recommendations:

“This is major and should be a worldwide issue...” – Hanshi Ronnie Colwell, one of our most respected and senior martial artists.

“My advice is never allow yourself to be alone with other people’s kids. There are a few (lots) of other advice but this one is the key.” – Sensei Andrew Paxton of New Zealand

“Parents and fellow instructors should use their common sense when it comes to a child's instructor. Does the instructor try to engineer situations where they are alone with a child? For example does he offer car pickups to that child? Does he chat to them in the changing rooms? Does he ask them about their personal life? When I taught children I was always vigilant not to ever be alone with a child and if a child needed their belt tied I would make sure plenty of people were present when I tied it - preferably parents. If I needed to correct posture I would do so without physical contact. What paedophiles and other offenders of that nature need is to engineer situations where they can be close to a child in private, then they will try to establish a relationship of trust with the child. Any good instructor will know that they must keep a safe distance (physically and emotionally) from a child in their care.” – Shihan Simon Keegan of the UK

All great advice from some very wise men!

Never allow yourself to be alone with a child in an area out of, or blocked from, public view. The private instruction room and office at my dojo has a glass door on it. That isn’t by accident. I intentionally had it installed for this very reason.

If your office door is solid and a student wants to speak with you, leave the door open. Or, have another person present to witness what transpires.

We must also be careful how we touch our students. We should never intentionally make physical contact with any inappropriate body areas or touch any area in an inappropriate manner, regardless of the gender of either party. Inappropriate body areas would include those on or around the hips, buttocks, genitals, lower stomach, and middle and upper parts of the inner thigh for males and these same areas plus the chest and upper stomach for females, whether child or adult.

How an instructor touches his students can also be inappropriate, even if away from the areas noted above. Students should not be touched in a caressing, sexually suggestive manner on any part of their anatomy.

Let me close for now. I’ll continue with this subject in my next post. Again, thanks for reading.

Instructing Children in the Martial Arts - Part II

“The greatest general wins without fighting,” Sun Tzu

“It’s easier to let a cat out of the bag than to get it back in.”

The mere charge of abusing a child is sufficient to ruin you, regardless of your innocence or even clearing yourself in a court of law. Your name will never be free of the taint of having been accused of molestation.

The original charge against you will appear on the front page of your local newspaper and lead off local TV newscasts. Being cleared of all charges will run in the back of the paper and in a one sentence throw-away line on your nightly news, if at all. And there will always be those who will think the police just weren’t able to prove your guilt. In their minds, you will always be guilty.

As I mentioned previously, the vast majority of instructors would not only never sexually abuse a child (or anyone else) but would strongly defend and protect their students from such things, with their very lives if necessary. But that doesn’t mean that any instructor, no matter how kind or protective of his students, can’t be charged with it, even if he did nothing wrong.

A horrible case was filed in the early 80s against the owners of a daycare center located in upscale Manhattan Beach, California. It became known as the McMartin Case. It was huge news back then and caused all instructors, teachers, and coaches to become far more careful in their interactions with their students and athletes.

The following was excerpted from Wikipedia: “The case started in August 1983 when Judy Johnson, the mother of a 2½ year-old boy reported to the police that her son was abused by Raymond Buckey at the McMartin Preschool… After seven years of criminal trials, no convictions were obtained, and all charges were dropped in 1990. As of 2006, it is the longest and most expensive criminal trial in the history of the United States. The accusations involved hidden tunnels, killing animals, Satan worship, and orgies. Judy Johnson (who made the original charge) was diagnosed with acute schizophrenia and in 1986 was found dead in her home from complications of chronic alcoholism. (She had also previously accused her ex-husband of sodomizing both their son and their dog!) Buckey and his mother Peggy McMartin were eventually released without any charges. In 2005 one of the testifying children retracted his testimony and said he lied, to protect his younger siblings and to please his parents.” The comments in parenthesis were added by me.

There is a great write-up on this fascinating case and the depth to which people sunk in an attempt to prosecute what were innocent people at the following link: http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_mcmar.htm

None of the outlandish charges were ever proven true. They were merely fabricated by the warped mind of an insane, alcoholic woman. But the prosecutors in the case further fueled the fire and launched a witch-hunt (almost literally). Prosecutors were found to have encouraged, and even rewarded, the school’s students for saying what they wanted to hear, the more outlandish the better, when none of it had actually occurred.

The McMartins spent many years in prison before finally being cleared of all charges. They lost their business. They had to sell their homes and all their possessions to pay for their gigantic legal fees. And they are still considered guilty by many people.

It’s critical you always maintain a defensive awareness when teaching or around young students. Remember the old adage, “One encounter, one chance.” I’ll get into specific things we all need to do when teaching children in my next post. Thanks again for reading my humble ramblings.

Instructing Children in the Martial Arts

The spread of the martial arts to every corner of the world over the last 60 years has brought with it many positive qualities for an ever-growing number of young people. It has served to get them into better physical condition, given them greater self-confidence and self-esteem, and enabled them to acquire greater control over their emotions, their lives, and their environments. Many have even been elevated to hold higher moral and ethical standards while also gaining a more humanistic view of their fellowman – in contrast to the “me first” mentality of many within their generation.

It is not the martial arts themselves, however, that bring about these positive changes in children. “Martial” is defined as having to do with war and fighting. As such, the martial arts also hold an equal potential to turn a child into a threat to himself and to society. It is those who teach the martial arts that are often the critical factor in whether the outcome will be negative or positive.

Just as there are those handful of negative people who have made their way into other very positive programs like religion, the Boy Scouts, the public school system, and so on, negative people have also found their way into the martial arts. These people can do tremendous damage not only to the children entrusted into their care but also to the martial arts as well, making mothers and fathers afraid to enroll their children, denying them the many life-enhancing, life-changing qualities our arts can offer when taught properly.

Twenty or thirty years ago, I was asked by a top state senator and top state assemblyman to create an instructor certification course. Motivated by several abuse cases committed by martial arts instructors in California around that time, their intent was to require martial arts instructors to be certified by the state, as are coaches and instructors in other similar activities. I was able to convince them that it would be better to make certification optional, rather than attempt to force instructors to comply. The Senator died before we got to a point where the program was ready for implementation. And the Assemblyman had to leave office as a result of a new term-limitation law. But I came away with the text I had written for them.

I am in the process of re-editing the text, which I entitled Instructing Children in the Martial Arts. It was never actually published but sent out in a ringed binder so it could be added to or changed later. In it, I discuss not only ways to make sure young students receive safe, positive training but also ways for instructors to better ensure they are never unjustly charged with, or sued for, sexual or physical abuse.

I’ll be passing on some of this in future posts.

Just Kick Him In The Groin – Part IV

Ron McCausland was a great karateka and friend. When we met, he was also with Soke Kubota’s International Karate Association (IKA). I think he started under another instructor and organization but switched over to Soke and the IKA in the 70s.

Sensei Ron McCausland

Ron ran an IKA affiliated dojo in Sacramento, California, for several years before moving back to LA, where he worked as a carpenter building movie sets for one of the major studios. He died very young, far too young, in his early 40s, I think.

Ron was a big guy and had a strong mindset and a sharp fighting eye. Soke Kubota developed some unique ashi and tai sabaki (foot and body shifting), at which Ron was very proficient, allowing even someone his size to move with great speed and agility.

He was a man of few words. But when he spoke, he was never one to mince words or sugar-coat anything, especially related to karate. Some guy came into his dojo once. He was a black belt in some other style and had moved into the area and was looking for a place to train. Now, all instructors have had guys like this come into their dojos. He had an attitude and kept saying “In our style we did it like this…” From what he was saying, Ron quickly determined the guy came from a style of questionable lineage.

At some point, the guy demonstrated some techniques, thinking they would impress Ron. Then, with a testy smirk on his face, he asked Ron what was the difference between what he (the guy) had done and what Ron did and taught. Ron told him “Well, what we do is like real karate and what you’ve done is like… bullshit.” I think Ron then paired off with the guy and showed him where what he had been taught was inadequate. To his credit, the guy signed up with Ron.

While in Sacramento, Ron took a job as a bouncer at the area’s roughest nightclub. One night, a patron rushed up and told him someone was very sick in the bathroom. Ron went back to the men’s room to offer help. As he opened the door, a hard punch slammed into his face. The sucker punch rocked Ron back. But he quickly recovered and charged in after his assailant. It was a guy Ron had had to throw out on several occasions. He was drunk or high and very intent on hurting Ron and refused to let anything deter him.

A hellacious fight ensued. The guy was also a good sized person and when the two battled, they did serious damage and not just to each other. They knocked down stall doors and walls. Mirrors were broken. Commodes were overturned. Sinks were knocked off the walls. Water shot into the air and flowed ankle deep.

In the end, Ron neutralized the guy and drug him outside, where the police arrested him. But I doubt if Ron (or any of us who heard his story) ever approached a closed door as we had before.

I use Ron’s story to make sure my students know the cost of a lack of vigilance or defensive awareness. Before I open a door in a public place, enter an elevator, or walk around a blind corner, I remind myself of what may be waiting inside or just out of sight.

Ron was a great guy and karateka. I miss the big guy.

Just Kick Him In The Groin – Part III

In an earlier post, I mentioned one of my old students, Steve Andrews. He trained with me in the late 60s and early 70s.

Steve was not tall but was strongly built. He had spent much of his life in a rough environment, which gave him a strong killer instinct. When he attacked or countered an attack, he did it with blinding speed and put everything he had into every technique he threw. Even when he hit you in a normally non-target area, such as the hip or shoulder, it knocked you off center and left a large bruise.

He got into frequent fights as he ran with a rowdy bunch of bikers. I generally wasn’t concerned about the fights, knowing it was with someone who was far out of line and simply had the bad luck (for them but good luck for society) of running into someone who knew what they were doing, instead of some poor, helpless guy on the street.

But Steve got into a fight one night that likely changed his attitude a bit about them, and caused me to readjust how I trained my students.

Steve was attacked late one night outside a downtown bar. The guy was so big that Steve always referred to it afterwards as his fight with Grizzly Adams.

Grizzly charged as if to tackle Steve. But before he could reach him, Steve reverse punched him in the head. He hit so hard he said he heard bones breaking in the guy’s face. The punch knocked Grizzly back but he stayed on his feet. He shook his head, moaned “ooo”, then charged again. Steve reverse punched him again in the face, and again heard his facial bones breaking. The punch knocked Grizzly back again and cut his face open from nose to ear. Instead of quitting, however, Grizzly shook his head and again said “ooo”, louder this time, clearly unfazed by the bone-break, face -plitting punches. Steve said by this time he was beginning to get worried and probably said “ooo” too.

Grizzly charged again and Steve hit him again. But he wasn’t set and got taken down. We practiced defense a lot back then against tackles, getting our legs grabbed while kicking, and such. Steve twisted in midair as we had practiced and came out on top of the man’s chest.

He punched him as hard and fast as he could in the head. To stop the punches, Grizzly grabbed his hand and bit his index finger all the way to the bone. Steve continued to punch him in the fact with his free hand but without effect. Finally, he stuck his fingers into the guy’s eyes to get him to release his finger.

They both got to their feet. The guy intended to continue but the sounds of approaching police sirens stopped him. They both left the scene.

This is the kind of fight martial artists have nightmares about. What would you do in a situation like this, or tell your students how best to deal with this type of opponent?

Just Kick Him In The Groin – Part II

How do you make yourself or your students ready for the street?

I’m not going to get into technical issues – fighting distance, techniques, etc. – as I’ve already shared my thoughts on some of these. What I intend to do is share some of the stories and experiences I use to help frame my approach and raise my students’ mindsets.

It’s long been an educational given that if you want to be successful in preparing yourself or your students for any situation, you need to train in a manner that’s as close to the actual situation you’ll encounter as possible.

In our case, this doesn’t mean just learning how to quickly and powerfully execute techniques or self-defense responses. More importantly, it also requires enabling yourself or your students to become proficient at applying those techniques under extreme stress. Knowing what to do and being able to actually do them when needed are two separate and distinct skills, generally requiring different training methods.

All instructors can achieve the former to some degree. But not all know how to achieve the latter, often producing students who possess fast and powerful techniques but can’t apply them in actual situations.

In the old days, instructors might tell their students to get as much experience on the street as possible, to test their techniques and themselves. Obviously, there are problems with this approach, legally and morally. So I don't advocate it. But students need to clearly understand the reality of what they may have to confront some day on the street.

My advice to my students has long been the same. Don’t imagine when training that you’re fighting some untrained guy who you likely could have beaten even without training. Train as if you were fighting Mohammed Ali at his prime with a baseball bat in his hands and on PCP.

I’ll stop here for now. I’ll begin getting into more specific, actual situations in my next post. Thanks again for your continued support. I appreciate it.

Just Kick Him In The Groin

While a graduate student in the Stanford University School of Education in the mid-70s, I set out to develop an effective self-defense course that could be taught to public school students in a standard, two-week PE training module. It had to be relatively comprehensive, capable of preparing students to avoid, deal with, or better survive most of the normal self-defense situations they might find themselves. It had to be easy to learn. And it had to be hard to forget. What I came up with was my trademarked StreetWise Self Defense Program. (I’ll likely talk about StreetWise at some later date.)

While developing my program, I researched everything I could find on how others structured and taught fixed-length self-defense courses. (There was no internet, YouTube, or DVDs at the time, just a few books and a couple of video tapes on the market.) I found some good ideas and a whole bunch of strange ones. The biggest sources of bad or strange ideas came from books written specifically on self-defense for women.

One such book was written by a nun who bragged about having no formal training in any combative system. She was apparently under the impression that if you kicked any man in the groin, he was finished. Every technique in her book ended with a groin kick.

Most men have been kicked in the groin at some point in their lives (or slipped off the pedal on their bikes). Many who immediately go down when kicked in the groin do so because that’s an option. They have the luxury in a given situation of going down. When in a serious fight, however, where going down is not a viable option, most of the men I know will not only continue to fight but will do so with added intensity for as long as their bodies allow. They will try everything within their power for whatever time they’re allowed to make sure the kicker goes down first. So a woman who kicks a man in the groin may well get the exact opposite of what she had been led to believe would be the case.

It’s not that groin kicks aren’t effective. It’s just that there’s no universal result. One of my former students, a major fighter who was well over 200 lbs and very experienced on the street, kicked an attacker in the groin so hard it lifted the man off the ground… and did absolutely nothing. Fortunately, the man had steel testicles but a glass jaw and was dropped with a strong reverse punch to the face.

I also came across a book written by a woman with a PhD who taught self-defense for women at a major university. She too believed kicks and strikes to the groin were the panacea, the game-ender for all possible attacks by men. But she added an interesting technique I had never encountered before or since.

After kicking a male attacker in the groin and him, of course, going down, she advised women to find a large rock or tree limb, put it under one of the downed man’s ankles, and then jump on his knee. It was a hell of a technique but I doubt any man is going to just lie there, twiddling his thumbs while she gathers up and places all the necessary materials.

“You can’t achieve what you can’t conceive.” In my next post, I want to pass on some street situations which I, my students, or martial arts friends actually experienced in order to show the images I have in my mind when I approach the preparation of my students for the street. Please feel free to share yours. Thanks again for reading.

See bullies get their due

A couple of nights ago, while flipping through the channels on TV, I caught a great show. It’s called Bully Beatdown. Apparently, it’s been on MTV for 3 seasons.

Viewers, who have been bullied, submit requests to the show for help. As an inducement to do something incredibly stupid, the show’s producers apparently offer the bully $10k to fight an MMA fighter in the ring. To win the money, though, the bully has to score tapouts against the MMA fighter. They keep whatever money they win via score. The person bullied gets the money scored by the MMA fighter. In the first round, there can be no striking, only grappling. In the second round, they can strike. Some of it is very funny and the smackdown well-deserved.

The following is the link to one of the complete shows:

http://www.mtv.com/videos/bully-beatdown-ep-307-bring-out-the-boar/1654770/playlist.jhtml#series=2211&seriesId=26843&channelId=1

Bunkai, Kyusho, and the Death Touch – Part XII

Here is a list of what I consider insightful books on pressure points:

Bubishi: The Classic Manual of Combat by Patrick McCarthy. Be sure to get the latest, 2008, edition.

Death Touch:The Science Behind The Legend of Dim-Mak by Michael Kelly.

Pressure Points: The Deadly Touch by Bruce Everett Miller (http://www.quanlikan.com/CMEProducts.html)

The Western Bubishi: An Advanced Study of Martial Arts by Rand Cardwell (cheaper copies are available if you do a bit of looking)

Color Atlas of Acupuncture 2^nd Edition by H.-U. Hecker, A. Steveling, E. Peuker, J.Kastner, and K. Liebchen (This is a nice, little, well-illustrated book on acupuncture but shows the locations of all points. It only keynotes healing points so you have to count off points to find specific ones sometimes. But they’re all there.)

There are, of course, other good books out there. These are merely the ones I’ve read and found most useful in acquiring an objective view of the subject.

Someone asked me about “the delayed death touch”, which I forgot to mention. I’ll likely soon add a final post on what causes the delay. I have a couple of interesting stories to tell on that subject.

Thanks for reading, Jim

Bunkai, Kyusho, and the Death Touch – Part XI

Although discussion of this subject could go on for a long time, I’ll likely wrap-up my thoughts on it with this one.

We have looked at incidents in which pressure point attacks have worked effectively. And we have looked at medical evidence that tends to support the vulnerability of these points. So we can rely on them to work in a self-defense situation, right?

Well, there’s an old saying in philosophy that you can’t get an “is” from an “ought”. You can’t assume that something is the case based solely on the belief or someone’s claim that it ought to be the case.

Many years ago, philosopher Karl Popper created what he called “The Falsifiability Criterion”. Briefly, he claimed that it’s often extremely difficult, perhaps even impossible, to prove something like this to be true. To do so, we would have to look at the outcome of every incident of a pressure point attack being applied in the past, present, and even the future to be positive they would always work. But it would be very easy to prove they couldn’t always be relied on by showing just a single instance in which they were applied and didn’t work. Popper held that we should rely on almost nothing. But we should perhaps prefer those things or courses of action that have withstood the greatest attempts over time to prove them false.

In the case of pressure points, there are plenty of cases where they have failed to work. A police training officer once told me his department had experimented with them and opted not to teach them to their officers because he had found them to be unreliable.

So does all this prove they don’t work?

No. Their failure could have been due to other things – for example, the uke (person hit) may have been a so-called “non-responder”. We’re all built a bit differently. Most of us are pretty close to each other in construction relative to the location and sensitivity of pressure points. But a significant percentage of people out there are not. How do you know you have a non-responder in front of you? Well when you poke them and they punch you in the face, you got one.

The other reason they may have failed is a lack of sufficient skill and knowledge on the part of the tori (person attempting to apply the attacks). I have no doubt there were (or are) masters who were far more skilled and knowledgeable of pressure point attacks than I am. Because they were so knowledgeable, well trained by true masters of such things, and experienced in their use, they could likely have defended themselves solely via the use of pressure point attacks. Would they always work even for these people? I don’t know. But if my only experience was using them against my own students, or believers who attended a workshop I conducted, I wouldn’t automatically assume they would work as effectively on the street in all or even most cases.

I think all this indicates, at least for me, not to rely solely on them in serious fights. If I’m close to an attacker in a life-or-death battle and have the option of poking him in a supposedly lethal pressure point or hitting him with a punch I know from experience will be bone-crushing, I’ll use the latter as I have a pretty good idea I can rely on it. I wouldn’t know until after I’d poked him if he was going to go down or just smile at me and try to drop me.

These are just my own personal beliefs relative to my own defense at this point in time. I’m not advocating others follow anything I’ve said. And my beliefs may change tomorrow. I’m always open to being convinced otherwise as I know far from everything there is to know about this subject, or any other. I certainly wouldn’t find fault with anyone who has a different opinion as their experience, skill level, and knowledge may be vastly different than mine. Plus, when it comes to our own lives, we all have to make that call for ourselves.

Thanks again for bearing with me throughout my ramblings on this. And please share your thoughts.