Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

Hey!  new(er) participants (and participettes), want to know another feature of the TToT bloghop that makes it the best of all bloghops?  In certain contexts, it is perfectly acceptable to cite  ‘Items of hypo-gratitude’ as part of your List of Ten Things of Thankful! no, really, it is!  For instance, the continuation of the non-heat wave for the last couple of weeks here in southern New England… that is totally my first item:

1) Winter-like weather (although, as the photo above shows, sometimes when the setting is right and there is an automobile between you and the frozen waters, it can be pretty neat!)

2) Friends given to spontaneous acts of book-gifting.  zoe (bpkai) sent us a book… just for the fun of it. It was received in kind.

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3) I’m grateful to have a friend like Lizzi (for reasons normal and reasons Doctrine). The former is quite obvious, when you see the effort she has expended in the things that she believes in and feels passionately about and, the latter, while possibly less obvious, is even more significant to me (i. e. the change over that last three years is testimony to possibility of self-improving oneself … while still being a clark!)

4) Speaking of clarks… Cynthia (another clark I’ve had the massive good fortune of coming to know)…. she is proving, in a way that is both totally unlike and exactly the same as Lizzi, that a person, possessed of strong desire, solid humility and faith in her/him self can accomplish things that are way, way  beyond anything that might, at an earlier time be imagined.   (and, did I mention she was a clark?  lol)

5)  Lets not forget  (hey!! new(er) people…. get out your note pads) the amazing Book of Secret Rules (aka Secret Book of Rules). It’s easily  the #2 Reason that the TToT would totally dominate at the Annual International Bloghop SmackDown… (well, it would if there were an Annual International Bloghop SmackDown   and, now that I think of it, there surely must be some kind of competition putting bloghops into some kind of arena of death…. or at least a flaming cage-match for bloghops…  think of the Tee shirts!  hey, maybe I should get one made!

6) BoSR/SBoR  (cont’d)  …so, the proper use of the Book of Secret Rules is sort of like, when you were a kid and your mother insisted that you eat some food-group that you knew for certain was not to your liking, and how, if she had only offered an alternative… you might have taken her up on it (instead, if memory serves me well, of sitting at the dining room table until 4:30 the next morning, not eating the ‘peppers and something’ meal that was sitting coldly on the plate, hours after the normal members of your family had ceased to find this particular battle of Wills interesting and had gone to bed and minutes after your mother, still seated across the table, head resting on her arms, sound asleep. As a clarklike mother who, perhaps in an ill-advised attempt to engage in a battle of wills, insisting that the only way anyone would leave her dinning room table was with an empty plate of ‘peppers and some-frickin-thing’, (I forget, it’s been many years).  You want to know how much a clark I was, even then, at age 7 or 8?  as I sat there, watching my mother sleep (the 10 hours or so of sitting there waiting for me to give up and eat ‘the damn peppers and whatever’, I felt both embarrassed for myself (and sorry for my mother…. not that she had to sit up all night, but that she had not been successful in her bid to force me to eat those frickin peppers and…’  Me? a clark!?  (though I still tend to underestimate my Reader’s understanding of the Wakefield Doctrine, I will tell you what you probably have already figured out,  that my mother was also very much a clark).

7) I have a developing sense of appreciation of the writers and writing… it’s an interest that has come to me rather late in the game, but I now read, not only to enjoy the words and the story and all, but also to appreciate the magic of catchy phrases and good story-telling. I find examples in some odd places, for example, in the police reports section of the primary RI newspaper. Thursday, as I was eating my burnt toast lunch, I came across a story about some kind of holdup or robbery … most of the story was standard, ‘at approximately 9:31 am, according to witnesses, the convenience store was held up, clues led police to the home of the suspect….’  pretty standard Police blotter fare… but the last lines of the story made me stop and laugh (in admiration of a writers skill):

“…armed with a knife and walking through the snow.” (Providence Journal 02/19/15)

8) how cool a line is that to come upon (while eating burnt toast, while engaging in some aerobics for my eyes )

9) the Wakefield Doctrine  well, because it pretty much is useful and fun, no matter what the situation or (desired) application. If you are out in your world today, I guarantee that (the proper use of) the Wakefield Doctrine will result in your day being more:

• satisfying, because you want to know that you are doing your best/the best, for the people in your lives despite/because they are so important to you… seeing their behavior/your behavior through the perspective of our little personality theory will provide one more  way of understanding, and, when you get down to basics, how can that not be worth the effort
• fun!!  no!  really!!   of course I’m saying that what we have here can provide you with fun and amusement and, no, when you get down to it, I don’t really know you or know what your life is like…  except …. I kinda do   (getting annoyed? go read the pages on rogers…. laughing?  hi scott!   intrigued, how this seems somehow familiar …keep reading clark!)
• yes, and scary too… well, scary in a creepy sorta way   remember how we say that the basic task of the Doctrine is to: ‘observe the other person, correctly infer how they are relating themselves to the world around them and, by doing this, see the world as they are experiencing it’?  well, once you start doing that, you’ll find people acting just like the book says they will, and, (here’s the potentially scary part) they will not have ever come into contact with this here blog here…

10)  1.3 yo  (BoSR/SBoR)

* see the list above?  as I typed the last item the internet connection was lost… the computer insisted that it was saving everything, so I click off and went out and dumped the electrons out of my modem (pulling the plugs, holding it upside down for 10 seconds…shaking it on occasion…came back…connection was restored, went to the draft post… all I saw was a photo and ‘Item 2’…  ayiiee  got upset, though about throwing the computer on the ground and taking up building ships in bottles or baking soufflés for a hobby… then I remembered that I copied everything to the clipboard… whew!

** I had to throw it out the window  (that I can appreciate that I did not, while wishing I had, represents one of the core paradoxeses  of the clarklike personality type…

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