First Time For Everything

so i had a "first time" about two days ago. my cat lady neighbor has asked me to paint her house. i have finished the front, the back, and now is time for the sides. i have a 20 ft ladder thats really long and skinny. It gets me a little over halfway to the top of this ladies house, and thats extending it ALL the way (which FYI, is not a good idea). i borrowed a 35 ft ladder from the esteemed University i work at. It got me to the top. so i begin climbing, with my sweet little pulley system i rigged for my paint can and brush. i get to the top. the wind is blowing, the ladder is bouncing and swaying (swaying because its on a a hill so the ground isnt level, so i had a series of bricks holding one leg up) and for the FIRST TIME, i think to myself, "i cant do this." There are lots of things i know i cant do, i have said "i cant do this" a thousand times. But the reason i said "i cant do this" this time, was because i started thinking about my wife, my son Grayden, my son Foster...and i thought, "i am really going to die and i cant be this irresponsible." So i got down, and i didnt finish. it was weird. Also, i have a friend and mentor who is the definition of responsibility and safety (for privacy sake, we will call him Chuck) and his head started floating around my head saying, "justin, you need to be responsible, this is not a good idea, you need three points of contact." anyways, it was pretty crazy.


double friday, i found this quote on a friends blog. i thought it was amazing:

"A child's instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting; a child always stands for the good militarism as against the bad. The child's hero is always the man or boy who defends himself suddenly and splendidly against aggression. The child's hero is never the man or boy who attempts by his mere personal force to extend his mere personal influence. In all boys' books, in all boys' conversation, the hero is one person and the bully the other. That combination of the hero and bully in one, which people now call the Strong Man or the Superman, would be simply unintelligible to any schoolboy....
But really to talk of this small human creature, who never picks up an umbrella without trying to use it as a sword, who will hardly read a book in which there is no fighting, who out of the Bible itself generally remembers the "bluggy" [bloody] parts, who never walks down the garden without imagining himself to be stuck all over with swords and daggers--to take this human creature and talk about the wickedness of teaching him to be military, seems rather a wild piece of humour. He has already not only the tradition of fighting, but a far manlier and more genial tradition of fighting than our own. No; I am not in favour of the child being taught militarism. I am in favour of the child teaching it. "