I finished high school in 1997. A long bloody time ago I know!
Even though I whinged about going to school (as most teenagers do) they were some of the funniest and happiest times of my life. No ‘real’ responsibilities, no job or pressure to make a living, 6 hour days, surrounded by mates all day and countless opportunities at recess to make moves on my crush at the canteen. None of which actually worked but I guess we didn’t know what tinder was back then so I actually had to have face to face conversations. Maybe that’s why I got no where…. HA!
Every now and then when I catch myself reminiscing back to those days, there’s always a few things permanently fixed in the memory bank. Mostly fun shit not related to actual school work but there are a couple of memories in the classroom that come to mind where I did learn a thing or two.
Accounting was one of my subjects. Not sure what year exactly (maybe 10 or 11) and our teacher was Mr. Moresco. If I’m being honest he wasn’t really a fave of mine and I can probably speak for him and say I wasn’t a fave of his either. He meant well but he was a little too serious for me.
He was also my teacher for a computer class we had. What was that called again? Computer Science I think….
I dunno but the class was all about how to type stuff. That’s all I can remember. Now I think about it, this was around 1995 ish so not even sure if you’d call it a computer. Anywho I can certainly remember how boring it was.
In this computer class we would spend nearly an hour with our fingers glued to the keyboard and eyes fixed to the screen learning how to type properly without looking down and pressing one key at a time (like I do now)
Mr. Moresco would roam the classroom, hands behind his back, in and out of the aisles making sure we were all complying to his instructions. For some reason I always felt like he was watching me and only me. Not sure why.
I’m not sure if it was because I never paid attention to what he was saying or the fact I used to mock his voice. Not even sure if it was because I used to shoot spit balls from across the room at other class mates out of an empty pen either. He must have just had it in for me I reckon.
Anyway the monotonous boring tones of his voice were enough to put anyone to sleep. And we had to sit at a desk and type to it. It was brutal.
It went something like this…
Ok class let’s put our hands on the home keys please and I will call out each of the letters in a sequence of 3.
…. And ready?
Let’s type
a….. b….. q
capital T….. s….. semi colon
f….. h….. capital P
Ben eyes up please, stop looking at the keys.
d….. y…… capital E (eye roll)
Ben!!! I said eyes up please!
But Mr. Moresco come on! Is this necessary? I don’t want to be a receptionist when I grow up!
Then I’d get the death stare…
Remember the teacher from the movie – Ferris Bueller’s day off?? If not do yourself a favour and YouTube that shit so it gives you an idea of what his classes were like. Even if it’s just for a giggle!
Here’s the link. You can thank me later 🙂
https://youtu.be/uhiCFdWeQfA
Anyway in amongst the mischief I got into Mr. Moresco did teach me important lessons.
In one particular accounting class, we worked on income and expenses spreadsheets. In the example we were given, our task was to distinguish all the expenses into those that were NEEDS (essential) and those that were WANTS (not essential).
For example…
Food is a ‘NEED
Beers with the boys is a ‘WANT’
Not exactly ground breaking stuff but the benefits of simply going through this exercise back then has had a huge impact on me even when making important decisions today.
It taught me to prioritise and decipher between expenses that were important to me and things that weren’t. Even though whilst I was at school my expenses were minimal (thanks Mum and Dad) the real world was right around the corner and Mr. Moresco’s teachings would soon come into play.
I say this because there’s still too many people out there that aren’t allocating their expenses very well and deciding to put a lot of their ‘wants’ before their more important ‘needs’. Unfortunately for whatever reason investing in pleasurable and material items is taking priority over necessities.
I like to point this out to people when the price of a gym membership at IFP comes up and people give me the answer ‘it’s too expensive’.
My simple answer is it’s not too expensive at all. You either just don’t understand the value of your own health and the importance of investing in it (which is a shame) or you don’t understand the difference between a need and a want and your priorities are out of whack.
Ps. To dumb it down even further – Your health is a bloody need! It’s a necessity. If you don’t have your health then you can’t accomplish any of your wants! Derrrr
I remember having a wonderful client back when I first started out as a pt. She was 140kgs and needed a lot of help.
Apart from the fact the priority was we NEEDED to get her healthy again to stop her from dying an early death she also loved and WANTED to travel and had two huge goals in her life she always dreamt of doing….
The first was to be able to buy only one plane ticket instead of two each time she flew as she couldn’t fit in only one seat. The other was to skydive. The problem was she was well over the weight limit to jump.
After a lot of work, time, dedication and patience she got there in the end and was able to do both. She put her health needs first in order to pursue her wants. I won’t lie she absolutely hated me at times but also loved me just as much. We clashed and we argued a lot especially when I would take her out of her comfort zone. At the end of the day though she knew I was coming from a good place and I really wanted to help her.
To this day its still one of the most satisfying journeys I’ve been on with someone.
So if you’re not catching my drift….
She had to work on her NEEDS which in this case was her health to be able to enjoy her WANTS which was to buy a single plane ticket and skydive.
Maybe it’s time to do an audit on yourself and sort out what your own needs and wants are. If you’re putting yourself and your health into the needs column then great work – you won’t regret it!
If it’s in the want column then you’ll unfortunately always be pulling the ‘too expensive’ card out as it’s simply not important enough to you.
When it comes to expenses, needs and wants are totally different. Make sure you’re not confusing the two and you’re prioritising accordingly.
I better finish by saying thanks to Mr. Moresco! You’re not such a bad bloke after all ay 🙂
‘’If you have a body, we can help you’’
Ben
Infinite Fitness Peninsula
