June 7, 2026

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Remember when you were just a young kid and teenagers seemed like adults — but adults that you could get away with disrespecting? Maybe that’s when we first learned to dabble in personal autonomy and taunt those who we perceived as authority figures, even while knowing they could crush us at will.

In the Spring of 1963, my second year of grade school, I pulled a Ferris Bueller and pretended to be sick so I could stay home from school. Actually, it was young Ferris who later pulled a Guy Lawson because my sneakiness preceded him by more that 20 years. Bottom line: I stayed home and my dad stayed home to look after me. I may not have experienced the freedom and adventures that old Ferris enjoyed, but I got a warm, sunny day off from school.

My three sisters were eight, nine, and ten years my senior so they attended the local high school. They also carpooled to school in a blue and white 1956 Buick Special, driven by my oldest sister, Sharon since she was the only one with a driver’s license.

On this particular day, my “life-threatening” illness complicated family logistics even beyond causing my father to miss work. Sharon had some “after-school meeting to attend” — a lie more obvious than my deathly illness — and my father was scheduled to pick my other two sisters up from school.

Consequently, I began feeling much improved near the end of the school day and assured my father I was up to accompanying him to the school, especially if we could stop by Lindees drive-in for a milkshake to soothe my sore throat on the way home.

We piled into the family’s 1957 Plymouth station wagon, complete with push-button automatic transmission (look it up if you don’t believe me) and headed for Garland High School in time for the 3:00PM bell. In those days, fewer kids drove to school, so the front parking lot was reserved for visitors. We parked in the primo spot.

Right on cue, giant teens poured out of the building, laughing, shoving each other in jest, and having a generally good time. The whole scene was awe-inspiring to my seven-year-old eyes. Then, only ten feet in front of our car, in broad daylight, two of those boys squared off to fight.

Truthfully, I should say that one boy, a 5’-8” wiry-looking punk, squared up in a boxing stance while the 6’-plus football player facing him just stood there laughing at the absurdity of the tough guy thinking he could take on someone taller, heavier, and far more muscular than himself. I was in utter rapture. This was going to be like having a seat in the Roman Coliseum while the lions devoured the Christians.

To my dismay, my dad said, “Stay right here” and stepped out of the car. He marched right up behind the thug, grabbed a fist-full of the back of his t-shirt and twisted so the collar was choking him like someone wrangling an angry mutt by the scruff of its neck. Dad yanked him backwards off his feet. When the tough guy hit the ground, my dad got in his face and told him to get his butt home and that my dad and his dad would be having words that evening.

It was in that instant that I recognized the tough guy as our next-door neighbor who was constantly in trouble with the local cops. Nobody — and I mean NOBBODY — messed with this kid. But my dad apparently hadn’t gotten the memo. “Dennis the Menace” as we called him, high-tailed it down the street much to the amusement of the onlookers.

Through it all, no adults emerged from the school building, including the principal, whose office window directly overlooked the altercation. It only occurred to me years later that the principal, may have been gleefully watching in anticipation of the ass-whipping that old Dennis was about to experience before my dad interrupted the life lesson.

Whatever the dynamics, I never looked at my dad the same way. He was not someone to be trifled with or to show disrespect. I never realized until too late to tell him, just how much influence he’d had on my life. I recently read that up to eighty percent of males who are guests of the Texas Department of Corrections, grew up without a father. That statistic has to transcend from mere correlation to actual causation.

Modern Dads
Four or five mornings a week, I walk on an elevated track at the local city recreation center. The track is on the second floor and circumnavigates a giant gym with eight basketball goals. There are often three or four half-court basketball games in progress but there are almost always two or three dads down on the open courts, working with their young kids — both boys and girls — to teach them the skills and strategies involved in the game.

To a man, those fathers are instructing their kids with supernatural levels of patience while the kids demonstrate A.D.D. levels of interest. I am often nearly overwhelmed with the urge to go down there and shake the hand of every father in the gym. It’s not that our culture needs more good basketball players; we just need more adults who grew up with a father that they learned to respect — and, by extension, learned the entire concept of respect for authority.

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

― Thomas Jefferson

Let’s talk. I’d really like to hear what you have to say, and it might even give me something to write about. Email me at guy@lawsoncomm.com.
I’ll buy you coffee and we can compare notes. I promise not to steal your ideas without permission.

The Coddling of the American Mind

— Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt

All you had to do was notice the second author to understand why I like this book. Haidt has an uncanny ability to cut through all the lies we’ve believed and continue to spread on to our offspring. He categorizes those lies as “The Three Great Untruths” and methodically exposes the foolishness of each. Don’t read this book if you want to feel all warm and fuzzy. But don’t miss it if you want to understand how you got where you are and how to move on.