taxi1010 Tutorial

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8. We, who live at the beginning of the 21st century, are the forefathers of the Internet, and if we're not doing something besides selling Sugar Pops, WTF!!! ... We might have a little wisdom to pass on to future generations, even if it's just a spark, or an idea.

9. My famous idea is that no verbal attack is ever original. We've all heard it all, one time or another, so why shouldn't we begin to create a reference manual for dealing with it? If we do it a certain way, we can use that reference material to build a robot to teach children what to do if someone flips them the bird.

10. Even Shakespeare had his heroes. He gives Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, all the good lines. Why shouldn't Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have equally good material? That's something I learned from Tom Stoppard! So taxi1010.com is for the underdog, because as the whole world knows, America loves the Underdog! It's actually for everybody, because in one situation or another, everyone is an underdog.

11. If you listen carefully, maybe on another frequency, you'll hear another kind of verbal exchange going on ... Some people are going around saying things like "Not alone," or "What a world!" or "Life is strange, isn't it?" and many of these sentences have a healing quality. For instance, if a woman says, "I'm just a housewife," you can cheerfully respond, "Not alone!" and then pour it on a little thick, "We can go home at night proud of ourselves!" A goofy thrust, or surge of extra energy invested in an absurd thing to say, can boost someone's spirits out of the doldrums. People are daydreaming, and sometimes you have a chance to give them a shock.

12. So I began writing down all the absurd, kind words my friends would say to one another, especially David Daniels, Virginia Zielinski, Janice Spampinato, and quite a few others (who happened to have grown up in New Jersey!) and wondered out loud, "Maybe there're just so many verbal attacks ... then I can change the world!" Virginia said, "It's impossible ... It's an infinite problem," and David said, "Who are you getting it from, Mickey?"

13. One note card after another, laid out on the tarmac at the airport ... I had twenty-two "sayings!" Then someone would come along and give me an attack that had no obvious response from the twenty-two. So I doubled it to forty-four sayings. Again, the mean, phony and stupid people made a touchdown. So I doubled it to eighty-eight sayings. Then suddenly, things settled down. It was an even match!

14. However, and here's where things got pretty weird ... the more I tried to climb out of the gutter of verbal abuse, the more people would attack! It was as if, by uncovering wounds to apply a little elixir, the more of a feeding frenzy the sharks would stir.

Review

8. WTF!!! We're the forefathers of the Internet. Can't we do something for future generations?

9. No verbal attack is ever original, so we can begin to create a reference manual for dealing with it.

10. Hamlet was the Prince of Denmark, and had famous lines ... Well, here's to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and all other underdogs, which we all are from time to time!

11. Many scripts have a healing quality. If you're lucky, you get a chance to boost other people's spirits out of the doldrums.

12. People from New Jersey are especially good at this. Nobody knows why. I just keep listening.

13. You can't begin to match mean, phony and stupid people until you have at least eighty-eight sayings. If you have fewer, they'll always figure out a way to make an end run.

14. The second you begin to uncover your wounds, by applying healing ideas, thoughts and sayings, it causes the sharks to go into a feeding frenzy, trying to yank you back into the shark pool.

Unifying Idea

(1.) Verbal attacks are rarely original. (2.) People are just spouting lines, trying to cover up their own pain. (3.) If you say something appropriate to the attack, it has a healing quality. (4.) It teaches the attacker how they might have responded to that attack when they first heard it. (5.) It heals your own wounds, though the process of uncovering them, to learn something new, sometimes feels a little painful.

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