As Good As A Dog

The late Rev. Stacy Myers told the congregation at West Lawn United Methodist that he was given two gems of advice from his father concerning preaching. He was also a pastor and a preacher. The first gem was to demonstrate that you had a sense of humor. Stacy, with various degrees of success, tried to get that over within the first few moments of each sermon. The second gem was to keep the sermon to only three major points. If you have more than three points, the people will not remember them. I find that statement to be amusing, even funny. That being said, my three major points are that you laugh, learn, and love while you read As Good As a Dog. Actually, I hope you can read better than a dog.

For my last semester in college I was a student teacher for senior high math. On my last day of classes a student gave me a little hand crafted and hand written booklet. Simply put, it was a collection of some of my sayings in math class. I only remember two of them, one being, “Cool it!” The other was a bit longer. It was, “having fun in school is okay as long as you’re learning while you’re laughing.” More than forty years later, one of my students in College Algebra wrote the following comment on a teacher evaluation form. The student wrote, “I hate math, but I loved coming to math class. He made it fun. I actually came to math class and learned some math.” Notice, the students get to evaluate their teachers. Perhaps, plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses should evaluate and rate their lawyers and the judge.

This story is about a serious issue, just like math. However, I consider it my task to make it enjoyable reading. If I could write a serious letter to the judge and have lawyers laugh out loud, then I must have the gift. If you can’t find humor somewhere in what I have written, then God didn’t create the “funny bone.” Trey hit his elbow the other day and came out with an, “Ouch!” I asked him if he hit his “funny bone.” He said, “No, it hurt.” I laughed. Trey didn’t. I hope you get to laugh.

I am a teacher. I will get the reader involved through questions. You may have to pause to think. If I did a good job of teaching, then you will come up with questions? The same event may be described in a different context in another chapter. Review is good. In one sense, I feel it is better to let you discover as you learn. Read the chapter titles for an inkling of what you might learn. I also hope through reading them you will be intrigued. Another hope is that you learn things you did not expect to learn. In writing math competencies, each statement of the competency starts with the phrase, “the student will be able to.”

I give you three competencies describing what you will learn from reading this book. Anymore than that you will not remember. Did you laugh? Anyway, the reader will be able to:

Understand the steps involved in custody determination.

Recognize that “dirty tactics” are used to win in divorce and custody battles.

Join in the fight against the use of these “dirty tactics” by the unscrupulous in the court system of family law.

We use the word “love” in many different ways. We say there are things we “love” to do. The boys love to ride bike. I love to play basketball. We say there are things of the “corporeal” that we love. We love the things of creation. But there are also the intangibles. My wife loves history. History is intangible. When you visit a place like Independence Hall, history can be experienced. The intangible becomes corporeal. It is said of God that he “so loved the world that he gave—.” Love was the impetus for God to act. Liberty is intangible. People have loved liberty enough to fight and die for it. I love “justice” and hate “injustice.” I love “justice” enough to write a book about seeking it. Love inspires action. So, laugh, learn, and love.