fight with your fists...

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From an article in Real Simple magazine titled 10 Things My Father Was Right About by Jancee Dunn:


1. Hold hands while you hash it out. My folks have been married for 47 years. One of my father’s rules for a happy marriage is that if a nasty argument erupts, hold hands as you fight. You’ll feel goofy doing this, but here’s the thing: It works. Recently my husband, Tom, forgot to pay a few bills that were buried under a pile of clutter. I was incandescent with rage. So we interlaced our fingers while we talked it out, and I felt my blood pressure plummet and my endorphins flow in spite of myself. It’s impossible to scream at someone who is giving your hand a gentle squeeze. It just is.


And a few others I liked =)


2. Pay attention to anyone who wears a tool belt... My father is practical, thrifty (or, put more accurately, cheap), and savvy about home improvements. He calls a repairman only as a last resort—and when he does, he hovers around the guy and asks tons of questions. “Carefully observe anyone with a skill that you don’t have,” my father often said, “and then you can take care of the fill-in-the-blank yourself.” He was right: After shadowing a handyman for an hour, I later fixed my own dishwasher, to the perpetual amazement of friends who call their super to change a lightbulb.

3. ...Or a uniform. It has always annoyed my dad that a waiter gets a 20 percent tip for serving a crème brûlée, while a hotel maid who disposes of used dental floss often winds up with bubkes. My father routinely told our sanitation men and the crew who cleaned his office that they were doing a good job and made sure to compensate them at holidays. As a child, I used to writhe with embarrassment when he did this. Now I do the same for the sanitation workers in my neighborhood. One guy once told me, with a catch in his voice, that in 10 years, it was the first time he had ever been thanked.

9. No one’s smarter than you. Long ago, if I was in a group and the conversation strayed to an unfamiliar topic, I’d keep silent. Dad urged me to say, “I don’t understand. Can you explain what you’re talking about?” Asking questions makes you sound smart, he said, and confident to boot. At a recent gathering, somebody mentioned the Mauritius Continental Shelf. Silence. Then I asked, “What’s that?” And all the former Ivy Leaguers around me exhaled and admitted they didn’t know what the hell it was, either.


View the entire article at
http://www.realsimple.com/magazine-more/inside-magazine/life-lessons/things-my-father-was-right-about-00000000035158/index.html