Keep Your Mouth Shut and Your Ears Open.

This is what my father said to me when I walked out the door in 1989 to go off to Navy boot camp. No handshake, no hug, he grabbed my arm as I went out the door, “keep your mouth shut, and your ears open.” As I got into the recruiters car for the drive to the Fort Dix processing center, Jet Airliner by the Steve Miller band was playing on the radio and my father’s words echoed in my head. All of it seemed very surreal and profound at the time as I stepped out from under the warm wing of parental love into the cold and violent world of men. I had just turned 18, and despite being born and raised in New York, I was as green as the guys I would meet in boot camp who came from one stoplight towns like Kalispell Montana.

My father was a tough man, both mentally and physically. He was an army veteran and a construction worker with eyes that cut like lasers and hands like cracked rawhide. When those mitts grabbed you and those eyes pierced your soul, he had your full attention. “Keep your mouth shut, and your eyes open.” Despite the other valuable pearls of wisdom my father passed along to me over the years, this particular one served me very well and got me through boot camp without any problems. I did keep my mouth shut, but opened it when I needed or was instructed to. I kept my ears open and found that it was better to learn from other people’s mistakes than to make your own in the first place. My father’s advice had served me well indeed.

Now some twenty years later, and a whole lot wiser, I find myself in the position to begin to catalogue and drudge up as much knowledge and wisdom as I can muster to pass on to my son. He is not yet ready to hear these things, much less understand them, but now it is my turn to pass along what I know to help him on the path to being a strong young man. However, things have obviously changed since I was raised in the 70’s and 80’s. When I go to my friends homes, if their kids even acknowledge me it is by my first name, a cardinal rule that would bring swift retribution when I was a child. There was no addressing adults by their first name, it just didn’t happen. Children also have seemed to have garnered some new power that they did not have when I was young, as I often see my friend’s kids verbally negotiating the terms of their parent’s rules and regulations.

Back in the day my fathers word was bond, and when mom went to town on you with a wooden spoon, you took your lumps and didn’t “raise your hands” to your mother to defend against the blows. I am not saying that those were good or even better parenting styles back then, but we did respect our parents and elders and wouldn’t dream of questioning their authority. It was absolute. So now my time has come. I must raise what is now a tottering, drooling little hurricane into a respectful, honorable, and good young man. I hope the lessons I have learned in life serve me well enough to do him justice, and when it is my turn to send him into the cold and violent world of men, I will also pass along what my father told me those many years ago. But, when I do it, it will be whispered into his ear as I hug him like my life depended on it.

Thanks for reading, John Pizzurro.