A Few of my Outermost Thoughts

"The first thing a child learns in school is to stop asking questions that can't be answered."


"You should explain your reasons to a child as if the child had to explain them to God."


"There comes an age when the future is that part of the past that you haven't relived yet."


"Truth: the tiny part of human belief that defies illogical explanation."


"In assembling the universal jigsaw puzzle, man has yet to find a side piece."


"Due to nature's design, few animals are capable of giving us the finger, although an alarming number who can have been photographed doing so."


"No matter what the political system, its end is always its own preservation, and its means is always you."


"Eventually you realize that your mother knows exactly who you are and has been trying to break it to you gently all your life."


"There's nothing like sitting alone on a park bench to start you thinking about how you came to be sitting alone on a park bench."


"No one who has to use a football analogy to explain life will ever get to first base in life."


"To err is human, to forgive does not get you the settlement that we at Suskind, Marberry and Callahan feel you're entitled to."


"You'll never have a more enjoyable Italian meal than on the Saturday night after Thanksgiving."


~ Robert Brault

Observations I Hesitate to Call Thoughts

"All I know about life is that it was the first thing my mother ever volunteered me for."


"I believe in coincidence but not as a reason for two things happening at the same time."


"The virtuous are always giving nasty names to minor sins. I guess it makes forgiveness more virtuous."


"No couple ever started a family with a well-thought-out exit strategy."


"In most dealings with other people, what you think is true might as well be."


"The most valuable lesson man has learned from his dog is to kick a few blades of grass over it and move on."


"I was born knowing nothing of life and will die knowing nothing of death, hopefully with better results."


"Every description I have ever heard of Purgatory exactly describes Earth."


"I am often overdrawn at my knowledge bank."


"I've learned never to be surprised if what must inevitably happen happens right now."


"I'm the sort of person that reminds people of someone else -- who they'd rather be talking to."


"Often, what seems an impossible climb is just a staircase without the steps drawn in."


"One key to success is to have lunch at the time of day most people have breakfast."


"When I ask a person what he thinks, I don't want to hear from some chip installed in his brain twenty years ago."


"I'm not against promoting self-esteem in kids, but I do have a 9-year-old grandson who still likes to come to my house even though he's never beaten me at chess."


"How old am I? It depends. In terms of this life, I'm in my 71st year. In terms of the next life, I'm in my third trimester."


"The major good any of us can do for our community is to be self-supporting."


"Unless you can divorce your happiness from that of anyone else, you still have a chance to be happy."


~ Robert Brault

Thoughts on the Dance of Life

"Do something each day that makes you feel guilty for wasting your time."


"Dancing is moving to the music without stepping on anyone's toes, pretty much the same as life."


"Ballroom dancing is a meeting of the eyes, with various options for keeping the feet separate."


"With due credit to Ginger Rogers, my wife can dance backwards, in heels, and while talking on a cell phone."


"As to my own dancing, I have many times tripped the light fantastic, but she always gets back on her feet."


"If you could eavesdrop on everything said about you, you'd spend most of your time waiting for the subject to come up."


"In believing that your goal is possible, you, yourself, give birth to its possibility."


"It is one thing to show your child the way, and a harder thing to then stand out of it."


"I believe that there is an explanation for everything, so, yes, I believe in miracles."


"Experience is the best teacher, the lesson normally beginning right after the quiz."


"Life is too short to hold a grudge, also too long."


"There are many experts on how things have been done up to now. If you think something could use a little improvement, you are the expert."


"Do not count on luck unless you are clear what it would be the reward for."


~ Robert Brault

Thoughts for a Thursday

"I had this dream where I died and they buried me and my dog got loose and they found my slippers at the foot of my grave."


"A country flourishes sharing the same belief system and disintegrates sharing the same denial system."


"It is every parent's goal to have an average kid who is exceptional in all things."


"People are always trying to attach labels to people with tattoos."


"It's thought that Adam was the first human to make a telescope of his two hands, Eve the first to make a pair of binoculars."


"To raise extra cash, families are more and more into corporate sponsorship of traditional events. Just recently in my neighborhood there's been the American Express Billy Smith Baptism, the Oscar Mayer Goldberg Bar Mitzvah and the Pennzoil Betty and Marv Johnson 50th Wedding Anniversary Celebration."


paranoia: the belief that everyone is out to get you.
neurosis: the belief that everyone is out to give you back.


"Look at it this way. You're not being ignored. You're successfully avoiding the paparazzi."


"Life is made simpler by having a long list of slights that you don't have to take exception to."


"The most difficult thing to represent digitally is suffering."


~ Robert Brault

A Thought on Skepticism (Revisited)

"The skeptic sees God revealed in nature and doubts Him, sees God revealed in Scripture and doubts Him, sees God revealed in the worship of countless believers and doubts Him, sees God revealed even as the object of his own doubt -- and doubts Him. The skeptic has no wish to believe, for he finds in doubt a religion absolved of any requirement to prove itself, an anti-faith whose god reveals himself nowhere -- not in nature, not in scripture, not in the worship of the mass of mankind. How clever it is of skepticism, having nothing to offer as a faith, to pose as doubt."

~ Robert Brault

Thoughts on Relationships

"You will not find a soulmate in the quiet of your room. You must go to a noisy place and look in the quiet corners."


"It is not only possible to be the person you pretend to be, but there is less effort involved."


"Why try to be someone you're not? Life is hard enough without adding impersonation to the skills required."


"I am told to just be myself, but as much as I have practiced the impression, I am still no good at it."


"To meet someone, someone must meet you, and for that purpose, you must be yourself."


"If God had wanted to be a big secret, He would not have created babbling brooks and whispering pines."


"You wonder if, at the end of life, a dog feels there is nothing left worth sniffing."


"I am a private person, but I will reveal this about myself: if you start massaging my shoulders, don't expect me to tell you to stop."


"Soulmates can meet anywhere. In a noisy singles bar, they will be the two people listening to the band."


Through sources, we have obtained the following alien assessment of the human species: "The male wants to be valued for what he pretends to be. The female wants to be overvalued for what she truly is."


~ Robert Brault

Random Thoughts on a November Day

"There are days as a parent when you begin to question whether nature's intent is the survival of the parents."


"It is harder to prove a truth than a lie because of the requirement that the proofs be true."


"There is a causal relationship between effort and achievement known to the underachiever as luck."


"Every person born is the result of a thousand coin tosses that have all come up heads. One can debate whether divine intervention was involved."


"In the end, your family tree is a diagram of a thousand choices, all made in your favor."


"Just when you think you have lost all interest in life, you lose a coin in a vending machine."


"Life is like sailing. You can use any wind to go in any direction."


"You can learn from the moral example of politicians, in the way that you can find your way south by using a compass that points always north."


"A child never loses anything in a place where a child would think to look for it."


"As parents, we strive to raise kids certain of our love and confident of their next meal, which, let's face it, means giving up a little leverage."


"All that's necessary to keep an idle grasshopper well-fed through the winter are industrious ants and a federal government."


~ Robert Brault

Thoughts on Organizing a Household

The trouble with, "A place for everything and everything in its place" is that there's always more everything than places.


"There is a common parental fallacy that a missing chess piece, or playing card, or Scrabble tile has to be somewhere in the house."


"An adult concept that kids find hard to fathom is that there is a rearrangement of toys that constitutes putting them away."


"The perfect family board game is one that can be played each time with fewer pieces."


"Strictly speaking, it's not a furniture arrangement when everything is exactly where you told the delivery people to just leave it for now."


"It is a fantasy of parents that children keep a snapshot in their heads of where everything would be if they put it all back where it belongs. "


"A child never thinks to look for a toy where he last threw it."


"If your older child has lost something, your younger child knows where it is."


Every household has an unorganized kitchen drawer --

a. where you can always find another pack of birthday candles.
b. that if you organized it, you'd need another kitchen drawer.
c. where you keep stuff that you don't mind emptying a drawer to find.
d. where you accumulate old wine corks for undesignated future use.
e. (fill in your own)



Today's Bonus Thought

"Not all worries end up as water under the bridge or over the dam. Some evaporate."


~ Robert Brault