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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday.  My name is Darrell Darnell, I lost out on my 4th grade spelling bee because I couldn’t spell the word homemade, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living.  In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I’ll tell how a trip to Dallas comic con turned into a character building moment for my kids.

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What I Learned Yesterday:
We have tried very hard to teach our kids to think of others before themselves, don’t do things to other people that you wouldn’t want done to you, be responsible for their own behavior, treat everyone with respect, and to never, ever be afraid to wear a Doctor Who shirt in public.  We all know that as parents, our kids are observing us and learning from us.  Sometimes they’re picking up our bad habits, but hopefully, if we do our job right, we’re teaching them those things that are good and noble and honorable.

Of course, none of us as humans or as parents are perfect, so sometimes I screw up as a parent.  But the story I want to share today is about one of those times where I got it right.

Dallas Comic-Con 2013 took place right around Mother’s Day and my wife thought that a good present for her would be to give her a weekend of relaxing at home…alone.  In fact, when I asked her what she thought about me taking the kids down to Dallas for Dallas Comic-con, her first words were, “Sounds like a great Mother’s Day present!”  This would be a win for everyone involved.  Kari would get to enjoy some peace and quiet, read her books, work on some cross-stitching, and relax.  The kids would get to take an adventure out of state, and I would get to get my geek on.

When the day arrived the kids and I piled into my wonderfully awesome 1984 Celica GT and headed south on I-35.  We rolled down the windows, opened up the sun roof and put on some road trip music.  And then it got hot and windy so we rolled up the windows, closed the sunroof, turned on the AC, and kept the road trip music cranking.

The kids did pretty good.  We stopped in a town called Ardmore that sits about halfway between Oklahoma City and Dallas so we could empty our bladders and get some stuff to fill them back up.  We then stopped again at the Texas welcome center so we could take pictures with the welcome to Texas sign.  The kids posed with the upside down hook ‘em horns hand gesture, of course.

We then jumped back in the trusty Toyota and finished the last leg of our trip.  We checked into a La Quinta off of highway 114 and found a place for dinner.  After dinner we made our way back to the hotel and got all of our stuff ready for the next day and called it a night.  The next morning we got up and had breakfast and arrived at the Irving Convention Center.  We did not arrive as early as I’d hoped and the lines were much longer than I’d anticipated.  In my scramble to get there as soon as possible, I’d forgotten to stop at the ATM and get some cash.  I never carry cash, but my gut told me I’d need some for parking.

Sure enough, when we got to the parking lot, or should I say, parking field, it was not free.  I asked one of the traffic controllers if there was an ATM nearby and she said there was one inside the convention center.  When I told her that I needed cash to park, she said that if I told the parking attendant that I needed cash from the ATM inside, then the attendant would go ahead and let me park.

We circled back around and eventually reached the parking attendant.  Sure enough, I told her that I needed to get money from the ATM inside and she gave me a voucher and allowed me to go ahead and park.  Our spot was pretty far back  in the field so it took us several minutes to walk across the field, make our way inside, find the ATM, and walk back out to the parking attendant.  When I gave her the money she was confused.  I explained to her that I’d told her I would be right back with money from the ATM and she was really surprised.  Apparently she’d let quite a few people park that used the same excuse I did, but no one else had come back to actually pay her.  She complimented me on my honesty and told my kids that they should be proud of me.  She handed me back my change and we started to walk away.  

However, as I counted the money she gave me I realized that she’d given me $5 too much.  I turned back to her and gave her back the extra money.  She again was surprised.  This time she told my kids that I was a man of integrity and that they should learn from what I’d just done.

I really appreciated her comments.  Sometimes I feel like I can tell my kids something or try to teach them something and they just don’t care.  But if a stranger or even one of their grandparents tells them the same thing, then they will listen.  Sometimes the voice of someone other than a parent has more impact.  As we walked away we talked about what I’d done, why I did it, and the importance of doing the right thing even when you don’t have to.

The rest of the weekend was really fun.  Well, there was the ridiculously long and disorganized line just trying to get inside the building on Saturday, but otherwise everything went off without a hitch.  I got to meet a couple of Golden Spiral Media listeners, Steve Salyer and Jesse Jackson (no not THAT Jesse Jackson).  AND, the kids and I got to meet and get autographs from Fringe actors John Noble and Jasika Nicole.  The kids even got to ask Jasika a question.

We spent our Saturday afternoon walking around and looking at various costumes.  Colby put put a Jedi into a force choke hold, we took pictures with daleks, storm troopers, the Doctor, Darth Vader, and even Iron Man.  The kids eventually tired out and we headed back to the hotel.  We rounded out our trip to Dallas by visiting the American Girl store and then headed back home.

It felt great to spend some quality time with the kids and introduce them to a whole new level of geek culture.  It felt great to teach them about being honest.  It felt great to see Addison freak out when she figured out I was surprising her with a trip to the American Girl store.  The weekend was full of win.

However, the greatest win came about 8 months after the trip.  The whole family was in the car on our way to go eat or see the grandparents.  I don’t remember that part.  What I do remember is that the topic of integrity came up.  Kari asked the kids if they knew what integrity meant.  Addison said that integrity is doing what is right even when no one is looking.  Kari and I looked at each other, impressed by her answer.  Colby said, “You mean like that time we were at comic-con and dad paid the parking lady and gave her back the extra money?”

Here’s what I learned.  I learned that my kids ARE learning and that my character and the character of my wife are going to have more impact on our children than anyone else.  As I said earlier, we don’t always get it right.  Please don’t think I’m a perfect person with perfect kids.  But I want my kids to be a better person than I am.  I want them to have more compassion, make better decisions, and leave the world better than they found it.  

Fortunately, most days I think it’s working.  In fact, my son came to us today and confessed that he’d used more than his allotted time on the computer.  He did this even though we didn’t catch it, and it would cause him to be grounded from the computer.  

Now, this parenting thing is hard.  I’ll share more stories about our family from time to time.  I’ll share some of our victories like this one, and I’ll share some of our failures too.  But I believe with everything that is in me that if we teach and demonstrate good character to our kids, they’ll have good character too.  

I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.

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