What's My Sign?

What's my sign? I would say STOP fits me perfectly, I even like the shape. YIELD is probably more accurate and who can argue with triangles? Oh, you mean my Zodiac sign? Seriously, are you serious? I mean, come on, no one buys into that. Okay, okay... I will look it up just to prove it's nonsense. According to the Zodiac rules, I am a Capricorn... a goat, because my birthday falls between December 22 and January 19. Makes perfect sense.

Let's see, after checking a few astrologically oriented websites I see that a Capricorn is: Responsible, realistic, disciplined, has self-control, and they make good managers. They value tradition, knowledge, history, and loyalty. Capricorns can be viewed by others as know-it-alls, condescending, and expecting the worst.

Hmm. I say it's just a coincidence. Lots of people born in other months have those traits, right? Let me read on a bit, knowledge is important.

Capricorns are hurt more by betrayal than most. They have high expectations in their friendships and struggle when friends don’t place the same value on their relationship. They dislike "almost everything" at some point. They thirst for knowledge and have little patience or understanding for those who resist learning, but they are willing to let those who desire ignorance to wallow in it as long as those persons are aware of the consequences of their self imposed lack of knowledge. Hmm. I taught high school for thirty years… I saw too many folks happy in their lack of knowledge and skills. Mercy.

This is not funny folks. Did one of my former students post all this Capricorn stuff just to make me start believing in this?

Reading on... Capricorn is represented by a goat, more precisely a sea goat. Half goat, half fish? Surf and turf. Some explain this as the goat protecting against fears, sometimes even calling it the fear goat. Apparently a Capricorn is likely to see the potential danger in almost everything, the goat hunkers down and protects from that danger. The fish tail? Well, there's danger in the water too. A tall tree? Beautiful, but a limb could fall and crush you. The Grand Canyon? Lovely, but don’t trust those rails on the hiking trail. A third floor balcony? That’s a long fall.

Another coincidence I guess. Yes, I do see danger where others don't. I was on the Safety Patrol in middle school. I’m serious. We're blessed with a little boy. I'll admit to being a "helicopter parent" sometimes. They don’t call distant taxi services when there is a medical emergency do they? No, they call in Life Flight HELICOPTERS. I suppose if I could pad the world to protect him, I might... or I might just lurk in the shadows with my goat horns and butt danger away. And really, if one life vest is good, wearing two has to be better, right?

One Capricorn wrote recently that being a goat was really being the GOAT. The greatest of all time? There have been some pretty famous Capricorns. Stephen Hawking and Elvis Presley… two peas in a goat fish pod! Muhammad Ali and Benjamin Franklin, JD Salinger and John Denver, and Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Anthony Hopkins. On the surface that’s a pretty brief list of disparate individuals, but there is a remarkable set of similarities in what they found important and their abilities to focus, organize, follow through, and succeed… some becoming the GOAT in their respective fields.

Well, I don’t want to argue with people's belief systems. Who am I to judge? And I appreciate the accolades, really, I do. I’m not sure what I might be the GOAT at, but the stars don’t lie. Maybe I need to check into this Zodiac sign thing a bit further. I'll proceed with caution. I'll YIELD to my best judgement. Learning something new couldn't hurt, right? Knowledge is power, take it from a Capricorn.