Sh*t My Dad Says (Justin Halpern)

Darling Brian (husband extraordinaire) finished physical therapy the other day and suggested that I return to school to become a licensed therapist. After wondering what the hell he was thinking, I reminded him, in the midst of my I-just-finished-a-doctorate-and-never-want-to-take-a-class-for-credit-again rant, that I have well over 200 credit hours on my transcripts. Then I actually counted my credit hours (a little OCD, I know) and figured out that I have 216 credits to my name; a fact which confirmed that I don’t intend to accrue more. But counting those 216 credits led to my contemplating the professors who taught them. And thinking about those professors (most of whom were/are employed at a PAC-10 university and made/make a living projecting perfectly politically correct personae) made me wonder how many of them walk the talk or, instead, are really just like Justin Halpern’s dad in Sh*t My Dad Says.

When we, the general public, meet Halpern’s dad, he is an already retired University of California, San Diego (UCSD) medical school professor; a well-published and highly respected academic. But he doesn’t fit the stereotype. Here are just a few of Dr. Halpern’s personal pearls of wisdom:

• “You thought it was hard? If kindergarten is busting your ass, I got some bad news for you about the rest of your life.”

• “Listen up, if someone is being nice to you, and you don’t know them, run away. No one is nice to you just to be nice to you, and if they are, well, they can go take their pleasant ass somewhere else.”

• “Cheating’s not easy. You probably think it is, but it ain’t. I bet you’d suck more at cheating than whatever it was you were trying to do legitimately.”

Basically, what Justin Halpern has done here is to track and Twitter and brilliantly wrap his dad’s utterances into a book of incredibly crass yet hilarious life lessons. Reading it made me wonder why I didn't think of doing something like this with my own family's adages?  I digress.

Anyway, since Dr. Halpern and I made similar career choices, I wondered what he’d say to Darling Brian after hearing his suggestion that I return to school. I bet it would be something like this:

“You’re like a tornado of bullshit right now. We’ll talk again when your bullshit dies out over someone else’s house.”

And to me about starting my tenth year in higher education this fall:

“It’s just, I’m having trouble wrapping my head around it. I mean, they gave you money to do this. YOU. Amazing.”

Thanks, Dr. Halpern. :)