Lessons in life can come from unlikely teachers

Many folks live within the circled wagons of their cliches’Ask them, for example, who taught them about life, or peace of mind, and they will blather on about some ancient sage or some 10-week class they took.

I’m not saying it can’t happen that way, but for me, most of the important lessons have come in the back door, when I wasn’t expecting anything nearly so grand.

I’m friends with my mother now, but we weren’t always buddies. She always loved me, but that’s a different story.

I learned about loyalty and blood’s power from mom, but I didn’t really learn much about women from her.

My ex-wife and I didn’t talk for years after our split in 1985, and although friendly now, I still don’t think of her as a true friend.

I’ve had four fairly serious relationships in the 15 years since my divorce. I’m on pretty good terms with all but one of those ladies.

I learned a lot about myself when two of them dumped me; I learned almost as much extricating myself from the other two. But I didn’t really learn a whole lot about women from those relationships, just what I wanted and expected from intimacy and what was required of me in return.

In 1994, my youngest daughter, then 15, would no longer live with my ex-wife, and because I’d been promising the kid since she was 12 that she could crowd in with me, I had to take her.

When she did move in, my one-bedroom apartment went from cozy to cramped, and the new setup finished off a pretty good relationship almost immediately.

The then-girlfriend was 23 years younger than me-much closer, age-wise, to Vanessa. It was all too much for her and the kid didn’t try to make it any easier.

Vanessa is very pretty, and that’s not just daddy talk. So it wasn’t long before guys started coming around and I watched how she handled that.

I learned something very important about women – they are better at concealing their true feelings from strangers than most men are. I envy them that.

Women are also, unless they’re screwed up, better at handling varying levels of interest from the opposite sex. Most men, if flirted with by a pretty girl, lose all control of their mental function. Puppies or rabid dogs come to mind.

I envy women their social skills. Most women, no matter how beautiful, seem to require a lot of reassurance that they are attractive. I learned that from watching Vanessa, too.

I’m living proof that a half-goofy-looking man with a relatively pleasing personality can have a social life. If I was a woman, most men, shallow creatures that we are, wouldn’t give me the time of day.

So, I understand that women who are interested in men have to be able to attract them. It seems like a lot of work, and I don’t envy women that at all.

Being a teenage girl at the time, hanging with other teenage girls, Vanessa had falling-outs with her friends on an almost- weekly basis. But most of the time, the girl would come over (our apartment was homebase because I ran the loosest ship in the parental navy. I often felt like Louisa May Alcott, surrounded as I was by Little Women) and she and Vanessa would talk the problem out.

I envy women their ability to resolve differences (within reason).

Now, you may not agree with some, or even all of what I think I’ve learned about the sex that is my opposite. But I think you have to agree single-parenting at least changed the way I think about women.

I owe that to my daughter.

Staff writer Dennis Wilken can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 252) and dwilken@pulitzer.net.