3 Seconds at a Time, Ocean Pines 1993

My father was a genius in autonomic programming. He wouldn’t have called it that. He would have just said, “You need to make that automatic. Practice. PraCtice. PRACTICE!” One practice was never enough to make his point. Modern autonomic re-programming is the idea of using your internal dialog to redefine your automatic functions. My father’s genius was knowing when to have an internal dialog and when to not. He once told me, “an extended internal dialog can be a handicap, and when speaking to yourself you should speak with kindness and always tell yourself the truth. If you don’t expect that from yourself, how can you expect it from others?”

No matter how wacky your internal dialog, there is a way to practice good autonomic re-programming; PRACTICE.

My Dad once showed me how to get back in the game in any sport. In golf, intense emotional highs and lows make it hard to swing the sticks consistently 72 times in a row. My Dad said, “In golf, after you hit your second bad shot in a row, take a 30 second time out and then get back in the game. (30 seconds is an eternity for me to focus 100% on just one thing; the ball). Address the ball, 30 seconds to clear your mind, you know where to stand, you know how to swing, you know how hard to hit it; trust your body to do what you have programmed it to do. And play!” At 30 seconds, the average adult attention span, I would usually gulp a frustrated deep breathe and swing for the fences.

The thing I am most deficient in is attention. I am very ADHD. I also had pretty bad dyslexia. When I was growing up ADHD had yet to be clearly defined. One doctor wanted to put me on Ritalin and Valium, but my Mom wouldn’t hear of it and let me loose on an unsuspecting world. At thirteen, 30 seconds of concentrated focus of attention would be almost enough to make my head explode.

“Andy, take a 30 second time out and then get back in the game!” I would stand there through all eternity staring at the ball for 30 seconds and then fire the ball irretrievably out of bounds. That brings me to dumb dumb daddyoism # 7, “How much does a golf ball cost these days? Anyways.” A thousand times.

He knew he had attention deficient boy as a son. I remember him limiting me to only one 30 second time out a hole. He developed the 3 second rule for me to get back in the game. “One second, stand still. One second, focus on the ball. One second, breathe in; then play.”  I remember when he said, “Take a 3 second time out and then get back in the game.” He sounded so sarcastic so I hit the way I wanted to hit and hit it well. In the golf cart he said, “The 3 second time out worked pretty good, but what do I know, I’m only your Dumb Dumb DaddyO!”

“Son, you need a 30 second time out and then get BACK in the GAME!” A thousand times.

"How much does a golf ball cost these days? Anyways!"

"OOOh...hardly worth looking UP for!"

A thousand times.

After his second stroke I moved back home with my Mom and Dad and my dog, Sam in Ocean Pines. The summer of 1993. I was 26. Single. And very unhappy. I helped him with his physical therapy and he set me free. June was pretty rough. July was pretty cool and by August we were playing golf! He had very little balance and was disey all the time, so on his drives we would try a 3 second approach. One second for him to loose his balance forward and lean on his club, bending it. One second to breathe in. One second to spring back up into the peak of his stance; then swing! He could still stick it 225 with his driver. An amazing feat considering six weeks earlier he had forgotten how to walk. He’d take a whack at it, swing his club back from his back swing, flip his club, and use it as a cane to get back to the cart. He say something like, “Did I get it? Felt like I got it!” Unbelievable.

Sometimes life is worth living 3 seconds at a time.

At the end of the summer he told me, “I don’t need you anymore. You are a very lucky man. You get to do something you may never be able to do again in your life.  You get to pick a place to live that is perfect for you and only you. You can do anything you want to do. If you move there you will have no trouble making a living, people will like you, and you will be happy. For me it has always been the other way around.”

So I surfed Hurricane Emily and then moved to Aspen!